Ignorance and Innocence
by kazzareaper
Summary: After that fateful night at the Genetic Opera, Shilo Wallace was left with nothing. She was content to just sit there and allow her life to fade away... Until a certain Graverobber happened by.
1. Introduction

Ignorance and Innocence: Introduction

Alright, here it is, my very first fanfiction of Repo! The Genetic Opera. Disclaimers tell me to tell you that I don't own this amazing piece of work. In fact, the only thing of Repo! I own happens to be my signed copy of the movie and various other signed pieces. Oh, and I also own my rather fertile imagination, which has been resurrected by this amazing bit of art. Please read and review. Constructive criticism is loved, but let's avoid flaming, that doesn't help my writing skills.

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It was such a… chaotic night. In the course of… what was it? Twelve hours, thirteen? More, less? She had no idea, but her world had turned upside down, in that short amount of time. Her father was dead, and she couldn't help but to blame herself for that. Her idol was dead, her blood disease had been cured – in fact, it had never existed.

Twenty-first century cure. It had killed some of the most important people in her life. Some cure. But people relied on it, even under the new management of Amber Sweet after the sudden death of Rotti Largo, "The Man Who Cured the Globe," mere moments after fatally shooting her father. Nothing would change. There would still be Repomen taking back the organs that people failed to pay on for one reason or another. Her father would be replaced, along with those that he had killed. Amber Sweet would still be addicted to the knife, and the drug that ate the pain.

Zydrate comes in a little glass vial…

A little glass vial. That was something else. She had met him in the graveyard, which had started that entire topsy-turvy night of her life. The one that had ended so poorly.

Graverobber had saved her, once, twice, what?

Even after she left the Genetic Opera, all those people staring at her, gaping, not a single one willing to help her father as he lay there in her arms, dying, bleeding his life upon the stage. But she had held him until the end, forgiving him his wrongs, telling him that she loved him even through everything that had happened.

After her powerful, confident exit from that dreadful place, with the bodies left upon the stage, Shilo Wallace had turned down an alleyway and broke. Her legs wouldn't hold her and she slid down the grimy wall and sobbed and sobbed until her tears ran dry and all that was left was a broken teen wracked with dry heaving sobs.

And that was when he found her.

"What'll you do now, Kid?" he asked, hoisting himself up to sit on the edge of the dumpster, one leg hanging down, swaying in time to some unheard tune.

"I don't know," she managed to say in a cracked, pathetic voice after a moment, "What can I do? I can't exactly go back home."

"Technically, you can," he said, a broad grin breaking across his face, "But, you don't want to, not just yet, at least. You don't know if you can handle going back there. Back to that place that was your prison and your salvation."

"Get out of my head," Shilo mumbled.

"I'm not in your head," Graverobber said dropping from the edge of the dumpster to perch in front of her, getting in her face, "It's written all over your face."

Shilo, unsure of his motives, couldn't bring herself to keep looking at the man that had saved her more than once already.

"I suppose that must be true," she said slowly, quietly. She was sure that her face was a crumpled mess. Sopping wet from the tears that had been raining rivers from her eyes. In those eyes was a fear of the future, isolation from everything she knew, uncertainty about what she would do and where she would go now. An entire array of emotions swimming in those eyes still brimming with tears that would no longer fall.

"Why are you here?" she asked thickly, unable to think of anything else to say.

"To ask you what you're going to do now," he replied, that grin, so like that of a Cheshire Cat, still plastered on his face as he sat perched on the balls of his feet before her.

"And I told you I didn't know," she replied with a sigh that seemed edging on irritable.

"Then maybe I can help with that," the Graverobber said, his grin growing, if it was even possible, broader.

He stood so suddenly it seemed like he should lose his balance and stumble, if not fall, backwards. But he didn't. Of course. He held a hand out to Shilo, she just stared at it.

"Come on, Kid, you say you can't go home. Where else would you go?" he said a slight laugh in his voice.

"I don't even know where I'd be going if I went with you," Shilo noted vaguely, her voice disinterested.

"I'm trying to help you, Kid," he said, sounding exasperated now.

Shilo, deciding that at this point she didn't really care what happened either way, took the offered hand and allowed him to help her up. With her finally on her feet, Graverobber placed an arm around her shoulders and leading her out of the alleyway.

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[Author's Note: Alright, I've been obsessing over Repo! For about…. I dunno, almost seven months now and this is my first fanfiction. Comments and constructive criticism is loved. I promise that the chapters won't be as short and… like _this_ as this one is. ^_^]


	2. Chapter 1

[A/N: Hey everybody. Ummm... usually disclaimers apply, for I am not Terrance Zdunich or Darren Smith. Hope you enjoy the first chapter of Ignorance and Innocence as much as I enjoyed writing it. I reallly hope that I managed to keep people in character. Constructive Critcism is loved, flaming is thrown back into the fireplace where they belong. Please Read and Review and I will love you forever and be more apt to update more quickly.]

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Chapter 1

"Tell me you don't live in a dumpster," Shilo was saying as they walked down another alley past a dumpster Graverobber had paused at, reaching in to grab something that she didn't see.

"No, Miss Sweet seems to think so though," the Graverobber replied. Shilo seemed livelier just with the human interaction, and that was a good thing, "She tends to come here when she wants a hit if she can't find me at the Zydrate Support Network."

He shrugged as if it were nothing. Shilo stood there staring at him as if he were absurd. Graverobber looked back at her, that Cheshire grin once again gracing his features, "It's not like I want her knowing where I actually live."

This made sense, though it wasn't really what Shilo had expected to hear from him, considering how he had acted towards her that one time she had seen her getting a hit as he called it… and all the other Zydrate addicts called it… and most likely, what just about every other addict of every other addictive substance would call it if they were in need. Their relationship had seemed a bit less than platonic then. She didn't say anything about it, but either he was still in her head or her emotions were still that plain on her face, but the grin faded from his face and he looked once again exasperated.

"You really were cooped up in that bedroom all your life. Your naïveté is showing, Kid," he stated, his voice had lost some of its good humor and game play as he watched his new ward's facial expressions. He almost expected her to look down searching for whatever he claimed was showing. But, she wasn't exactly that naïve. Though she did stare at him blankly, either an effect of her confusion, or she wasn't doing nearly as well as Graverobber had been assuming she was for the past few minutes. He would assume it was a mix of both, "I take all sorts of payment, Kid, welcome to your crash course in the real world."

"I'm drenched in the blood of my father whom I just watched get shot by the man that was starting to replace him as a father figure… and you think I need a crash course in the real world?" her voice was mocking, not something that even Graverobber, who, though he was the person that knew her best this side of the grave, still knows very, very little about the young woman, hadn't expected. He stared at her quizzically for a moment before brushing off the sentiment she was sending him, whether she realized it or not. She had indeed been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours, so lapses in judgment… in personality, were expected. She would snap out of it. Besides, she was right, in a way; though she was wrong in so many others. Her recent experiences with death did not make her learned in the ways of the world. Not in the least.

"Isn't that enough of a crash?" she asked, her eyes straying to the ground, cement that was so littered with various bits of trash and grime you couldn't see the cracked and broken ground below. Her voice had fallen just as her eyes had showing the tormented girl beneath the shroud of normalcy that Graverobber now knew she had been hiding behind.

Graverobber didn't know what to do; he wasn't used to taking care of someone that wasn't himself. And he had never had to deal with something like… this, when taking care of himself. He didn't know the first thing about comforting anyone, and didn't really know if he had it in him to do in the first place.

"Where are we going, if it isn't a dumpster?" she asked, her voice still flat and her eyes still downcast.

Graverobber, not really one to dwell on things, was getting rather tired of the low attitude, despite that Shilo hadn't allowed her shroud to fall even five minutes ago. But, it was keeping him from humorous view of the world, and he wasn't particularly keen on the idea of being kept from his humor. So, he took a deep breath and sighed it out before striding over to the downcast young woman and putting an arm once again around her shoulders.

"Cheer up, Kid, your old man wouldn't have wanted this of you over him. I know it's gonna be hard, it'll get better with time. You've gotta try to make it work though, or you'll stay a zombie forever," he said, giving her a little shake to make sure he had her attention, plastering the grin back upon his face, hoping that something more or less familiar would make her feel better. Because, honestly, how many times had she seen him without that grin. It wasn't very manner, and he was pretty sure she had only seen him serious while he was distributing Zydrate.

She looked up at him, her eyes still strangely blank, but a thin film of tears layered them threatening to fall once more. That was better than what she had been, there was an emotion there, one that she was trying to hide. Progress, that's what Graverobber was going to call it.

"He asked me to change the world," she said in a whisper, "Do you think that I could do that?"

Graverobber shrugged, "You can if you want to, gotta put your mind to it, and really want it, but I bet you could do it," he said, glancing down into those glassy brown eyes, "Do you want to change the world? Or do you just want the world to change?"

Shilo wasn't really sure what she wanted. Changing the world would mean a lot of things, and if she did it it would get done the way she wanted it to. She thought for a moment, a very long moment, pondering the newest dilemma that had wandering into her mind.

"What if the world that I want… isn't the world that everyone else wants? People are happy like this… who am I to force them to change into something they may not want or like?" she asked, sounding very wise for her age, despite her thick voice.

Graverobber's grin was wide again, reaching all the way to his eyes and causing them to twinkle mischievously, "True, very true, who are you to force change upon them? At least when Rotti started GeneCo it was necessary."

Shilo nodded, looking straight ahead in a vague way, once again thinking for a long moment. She seemed to come to a decision, which, in fact, she had, as she looked up and spoke once more, "Then I'll change my world," she said firmly, a glint of determination in her glossy eyes.

"Good job, Kid," Graverobber told her, giving her a bit of a squeeze of the shoulders, showing his appreciation for her decision before letting her go, "And, I'll help you with that. You have nowhere else to go, at least nowhere you actually want to go right now. So, you can come with me," he said, striding away, not looking back at her as he spoke. Graverobber was not one to offer any help that would affect him directly for more than a few minutes. And now he was offering this young woman a place to stay. He blew out a breath; things were going to be interesting.

Shilo followed when she noticed that the Graverobber who had saved he, who was, in fact, still saving her, wasn't just taking a few steps while he thought. He wasn't pacing, he was leaving, and she wasn't about to be left in this place, lost in the middle of the city that she only knew from her view out the window of her bedroom. No, it wasn't her bedroom anymore, but it had been. It was strange to think of it that way, and, even more than telling herself that her father had been murdered before her very eyes, it was the thought that that bedroom, where she could see the world, was no longer her home.

"My name's Shilo," she corrected him, just to get her mind off of the unpleasant matters for a few moments at least.

He didn't turn, but she heard him chuckle from ahead of her, his gait far larger than her own, enough that she had to start jogging to be able to keep up. He slowed once she caught up to him to match his pace to one that she was more comfortable keeping up with.

'_How sweet_,' she thought to herself in exasperation at the older man.

"Is it very far?" she asked, she didn't know about him, but she had had a very long day, and she was tired enough she felt like she could sleep the rest of her life away.

"It's far enough to be out of the way of prying eyes," he replied vaguely, continuing to walk at his fairly brisk pace. Shilo had assumed that the Graverobber would make his abode somewhere inconspicuous and out of the way, so his response wasn't really very helpful. When you're seen as a criminal to the people with big guns, you usually try to stay below the radar. She just hoped that they weren't heading to another cemetery. She didn't mind visiting them, she did it often enough, but she just didn't think that she could handle living in one.

After about another half an hour of walking through shadows and dank alleyways, they came upon a small, seemingly abandoned house. It was in disrepair, the outside all but falling apart, windows were boarded up, and she couldn't even seem to find the front door behind the collapsed porch. She looked warily over to Graverobber, almost dreading the next words to come out of his mouth.

"We're here," he said with a knowing grin.

He had said what she had feared and she cast an almost frightened glance at the house that was so obviously falling to pieces before their eyes.

"Are you sure it's safe?" she asked, eying the house, just waiting for it to cave in somewhere while she stood there and watched it.

Graverobber chuckled again, "It's safe, the main house is structurally sound. Follow me."

He took her arm by the elbow and lead her around the rear of the house where there stood another door, this one was boarded shut as well, but he walked up to it like there were no boards, as if the house didn't look like it would fall over onto him, tugging Shilo along with him for his apparent death. She tensed, not really willing to go into the house. Graverobber looked back at her with his trademark grin in place.

"Don't worry, you'll be surprised. Now, let's get inside before someone sees us," he said, pulling on one of the boards and the door swung open easily. Shilo looked around, she didn't see anyone nearby, but she was being a bit paranoid, with her decision of getting into the house or not. In the end, Graverobber didn't give her much of a choice, tugging on her arm so that she was almost pulled into the house.

Graverobber had been right, she was surprised. Inside the house was fairly clean, albeit dusty and with a feeling of disuse… but she was standing inside a condemned house. Everything seemed sound, in fact, it seemed almost lived in. She looked to Graverobber questioningly, and he grinned with a show of white teeth.

"No one is going to suspect a building that doesn't even look like you can get into it. Remember, Zydrate sells for a pretty penny, I've kept this place livable without anyone being the wiser," he said as if it were nothing.

"It's… nice, I guess," Shilo said awkwardly, causing Graverobber to chuckle again, "But, it needs to be cleaned, I guess."

"Well, I'm not really here too often… so it is messy," he said with a shrug, laughter still in his voice.

Shilo looked around the place, which was as small as the outside had made it look. It was also dark, too dark for her to really see properly, but it seemed like it was sparsely decorated, not that she had really expected him to have a lot of things going on in the house. She was just lucky that it was structurally sound and she didn't have to be afraid of the roof falling in on her while she was sleeping. Which brought another question to mind, one that made her look to the floor, which looked fairly clean despite the coating of dust and the footprints in it, and a blush crawled across her face at having to ask the question in the first place.

"Umm… wh-where will I be sleeping?" she asked, stumbling over her words slightly.

At this, Graverobber simply leaned back and laughed, a deep rumbling laugh, unlike his chuckling which was more cynical than anything else half the time. He couldn't help himself, she was just too much, too lost and confused, and uncomfortable here, as if he was going to throw her out to the streets at any moment. He knew that he wasn't about to do that, but she didn't trust him enough not to. He may have saved her from a few interesting situations, but he was still Graverobber. Not to mention, that first time in the graveyard, he hadn't really saved her… she had still been grabbed by the Repomen, and would have died if it weren't for Rotti and her own disguised father's intervention.

"I'll look into a real bed for you, for now you can have the couch," he said putting one of his large hands between her shoulder blades to lead her to the living room. He left her standing awkwardly in the doorway while he fiddled around somewhere deeper in the room. She didn't have a clue what he was doing in the darkness until there was a spark and a flicker of light and warmth coming from a fireplace. If anyone had been looking at the house, they would see a thing line of smoke curling into the sky to be lost amongst the clouds. Shilo didn't realize until the fire was lit and crackling exactly how cold she was. It must have been shock. Or something.

"Sit down, Kid," Graverobber told her, indicating the couch, it was thick and looked comfortable, though, a bit dirty, just like the rest of the house. There was a layer of dust on the couch, and she could feel it on her legs and back as she sat down and hugged herself in front of the fire.

Graverobber disappeared for a few minutes, and when she returned he placed a thick blanket around Shilo's shoulders. It wasn't something she was expecting, and the new weight made her jump and look around.

"Jumpy, Kid," Graverobber said, stating the obvious.

"Just a little," Shilo said, there was a bit of bite to her voice, a very good sign. Though she may still have been in shock from the events of the night she would recover. And, from the looks of it, she would recover fairly quickly from this trauma.

"Get some sleep, Kid, it'll do you good." Graverobber said, giving her shoulder a squeeze before walking by to sit on the recliner on the other side of the fire.

"Sounds like a good idea…" Shilo said with a yawn. She really was tired, and it was really starting to catch up to her. She slumped over onto her right side, kicked off her shoes, and curled up onto the less than pristine couch. She was asleep within five minutes, giving Graverobber ample time to think what had just happened through.

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[A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. I'll hopefully start naming the chapters some time in the near future.]


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Graverobber sat in his filthy recliner as if it were a throne for a long while, staring into the fire without really seeing as he thought long and deep. He wasn't thinking about thrones though, of course now; what would a Graverobber do with a throne? Get caught, that's what he would do. Instead, he thought about what it was that had made him take this young woman in, effectively making her unofficially his ward. Unofficially, because he wasn't about to tell the world of this random act of kindness. Granted, he was really the only person left in the world that would take her in in the first place. Normally, that wouldn't matter in the least to him. But… this time it did. And, no matter how long he thought on it that night, he couldn't put his dirt crusted finger on it.

That didn't stop him from trying though. This was the Graverobber, he was stubborn, and not likely to give up just because a certain thought eluded him. No, not in the least. In fact, it spurred him on, made him want to find that one elusive piece of thought, find it and force it into submission until he could make sense of it. And that just wasn't happening, tonight at least.

_I'm not one for sympathy… but her. I don't know what to think._ He said to himself silently, so as not to wake the sleeping teenager on the couch nearby. He shook his head, confused by his own actions, and wondering why he didn't just have her leave in the morning. Actually, he knew the answer to that one already. Graverobber, no matter all of those other things that people said about him, was a man of his word. He told Shilo that he would help her, and that was what he would do. And, to be honest, even with himself, he kind of found that he wanted to help her. Was it some sort of atonement for his sins? Not likely. But it was something that he couldn't name, and he was intrigued by it. Intrigued by one's own self… seriously, who wasn't? And, of those people that claimed not to be intrigued by themselves… who's lying through their teeth? Most of them, that's for sure.

Well, Graverobber knew something for certain: there was now a teenage girl living in his house. Well… crap. What did that mean, really? He had told her that he would get her a real bed, why had he even said that, he didn't know, but he had said it, and he was as good as his word; which made him good in the end, because he wasn't one to go against his word. But, he would get her a bed, sometime sooner rather than later. He would start looking into that probably in the morning. If not in the morning, then he would definitely start looking the next day. Though Graverobber was used to living in less than hospitable conditions, Shilo was not, and he didn't think that such an instantaneous change in living arrangements needed to get worse by her not even having a bed to sleep in.

With a sigh at himself, Graverobber settled back into the recliner to get more comfortable. He closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep in some time before dawn. Though the night was the time that most people are out panting for Z, Graverobber wasn't out there every night. In fact, sometimes, he was out during the day. It was slightly less predictable. But, his day had been nearly as long as Shilo's had been. He, at least, had been up longer than she; though less interesting things had happened to him. Slightly less interesting, at least. He had met her in a graveyard, after all.

He drifted off to sleep, there were no sugar plums to dance in his head, nor were there vials or Zydrate taunting him in his slumber. In fact, he slept deeply enough that he didn't remember his dreams that night. Which might have just been for the best, it meant that he didn't remember the ghosts that haunted him as he slept. The decaying spirits of those he defiled in the graveyards coming back to get their vengeance in the night.

It was a few hours of peace. A few hours of peace that was so rare for the Graverobber. When he was awake, people were hounding him for his Zydrate, whether to buy it or to kill him for harvesting it. When he was asleep, he was haunted by the ghosts of those he harvested. Sometimes he really did wonder why he ever got into this business. It was so dangerous, on top of all of the other little bothers that it presented.

Oh well, he was in too deep to climb out of the pit that he had dug for himself over the years of harvesting and peddling illegal Zydrate. Too many people wanted him dead now, if he did try and find another living… those people would still want him dead. Those people that depended on him would still expect him to supply them with Zydrate. Not to mention that his past would prevent him from having very many job opportunities. Oh well, there were many things that he wouldn't be doing.

There were things that he regretted having done, but getting into this business wasn't usually one of them. Sometimes, yes, other times it was the best job. After all, for every market a submarket grows. It was just the way of things. And he was good at what he did. Even screaming in the middle of a graveyard full of men out to kill his kind, he still wasn't caught. Not once. But, when it was a matter of life and death, one didn't make mistakes in their line of work.

Shilo turned over in her sleep with a groan. Her own dreams weren't nearly as peaceful as her savior's were. She was plagued by nightmares of the previous day, reliving some of the most unpleasant moments that her mind could wrap itself around. She watched as she pulled her father's mask off, revealing him to be a Repoman. She watched Rotti shoot him while the stage was dark. Blind Mag's body still stuck upon the wrought iron fence. Honestly, who used a real wrought iron fence as a prop?

Shilo rolled over again, with another groan accompanying her pained dreams. Her movement and small stressed noises made Graverobber crack open an eye and look at her. Well, his sleep had been peaceful, before hers had become plagued as his usually were. He pushed himself up onto his elbows to get a better look over at the couch where the young female slept. Both of his eyes were open now, and he could see her fairly well in the dim light of the dying flame. There wasn't really much that he could do for her at this point. She was asleep, and sleep was best for her right now. The dreams would end in time. But, right now she would have to deal with the normal shock and fears that came with such a trauma.

Graverobber settled back into his recliner, hoping to get in another few hours of sleep before the sun rose and he had to go about his business. His business tomorrow would be hunting for a bed though, instead of his usual Zydrate peddling or harvesting. He let out a long breath and closed his eyes once more, hearing the occasional thrash from Shilo.

"You can get through this, Kid," he muttered under his breath at one of these points, without opening his eyes this time.

Shilo did not calm in her nightmares with those words. This was not a fairy tale, and simple words, simple gestures, simple actions don't work miracles. Not all the time. Shilo wasn't going to be fine just because Graverobber said that she would. Welcome to the real world.

Graverobber could already tell that morning was going to come too soon for the young woman sleeping on his couch. There was little he could do to stop time for her to get a decent about of sleep though, and it wasn't time that she had to worry about either. He couldn't make the dreams stop for her, and if he could, he would, if only so that he could go back to his dreamless sleep comfortably. Again, it wasn't going to happen.

He heaved another sigh. He had wanted to think earlier in the night, but now he found himself just wanting to stop. He needed to stop thinking and go back to sleep. And that sounded like a good idea, if only he could manage it with Shilo whimpering in the background like a lost and lonely puppy.

He shifted to his side to try and get more comfortable and to block out some of the quiet noises that Shilo was making in the process and closed his eyes to the embers of the fire staring at him through his lids. He spent a few more minutes trying to calm his mind before he tried to sleep once more. This time, he was successful, and Shilo's whimpering finally ceased within the hour.

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[A/N: Pretty short chapter, and I kinda hate how it came out. I'm pretty sure I went way out of character on this one.... I'll do better next time, I promise. But, I did want to try and get a bit into Graverobber's head. Anyway, as always, read, review, constructive criticism, you know the drill.]


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The next morning Shilo woke groggy, and feeling like she hadn't even fallen asleep. She looked around through eyes crusted over with sleep and realized that she was cold, very cold. She shivered as she sat up, hugging the blanket to herself. She looked over at the recliner where she had seen Graverobber last before falling asleep only to find the seat empty. She looked around fearing that he had abandoned her here. She didn't see him anywhere, and the house was quiet. She stared down at her fingers, clasped tightly to the edges of the blanket near the hollow of her throat.

Her stomach growled then, and she groaned, allowing herself to fall back against the cushions of the couch the hair of her wig falling around her in a tangled mess. Well, that sucked. There was a reason she took the thing off when she slept. It was going to take ages for her to get it back into order, if she could even do it.

She heard footsteps, heavy ones that said plainly that there were heavy boots on the feet that were walking toward the living room. She sat up, peering over the back of the couch at the door, fearful of whom it might be. She didn't know if she should be relieved or scared if it turned out to be Graverobber. But, then she realized that she would rather that it was him than anyone else that might just find her here.

As it happened, it was Graverobber that paused at the doorframe to lean against it, that grin once again gracing his features. He was holding something, and Shilo sat up a little straighter in her seat to see it better. But, instead of letting her see it, Graverobber threw it towards her and she scrambled to either catch it or get out of the way. She managed to catch it by the tips of her fingers and glanced at it. It was a sandwich, not the most appetizing thing that she had ever laid eyes on, but it was edible and Shilo wasn't in any position to be picky about this.

"Still nervous I see, Kid," he said by way of greeting, not even mentioning the food that he had given her.

"Thanks," Shilo said through a mouthful of sandwich, as she chewed and swallowed wishing that she had something to drink, she wasn't going to mention it though, because she didn't want to seem pushy to this guy that was being so generous. She was sure that his generosity was only so far reaching.

"What are you doing today?" she asked instead, he had said something about getting her a real bed last night, hadn't he? She hadn't slept very well the night before, but she didn't think that the couch was the reason she kept having those nightmares.

She had woken up once in the middle of the night and saw what was left of the embers of the fire making a glow just bright enough for her to see Graverobber's profile, and she had thought that she was still asleep for a moment. And then she remembered the night before and silently cried, finding that she could again. Because of that little happening the night before, Shilo didn't think that yesterday was a dream, too much had happened to fit in a dream anyway.

"A few things and I'm not exactly sure what I'll b doing first. I've some things to do today that I'm not really sure that you'd like to accompany me with," Graverobber said with a shrug, answering the question but skirting around the answer in such a way that it left Shilo without answers. She looked at him skeptically, wondering what he was talking about and why he had to talk circles around such a simple question. Then, it hit her; he probably had things to do today that would be detrimental for people he didn't trust to know about. He was, after all, an illegal man with an illegal business. How many people out there would report him if they had the chance. Graverobber might have enemies; there might be other Graverobbers out there that were jealous of the business of this one.

"I don't know what you'd be doing, but I really don't have anything else that I might do," Shilo said with a shrug as she finished off her sandwich, "I don't know how much there is right now that could bother me."

Graverobber allowed the full force of his Cheshire grin cross his face as she said that, "Oh really? Aspirations of becoming a Graverobber, Kid?" he asked.

Shilo gave him wide eyes and a slight flush rising in her cheeks, "Oh…well, I didn't mean that. But, I don't know much else. Actually, I don't even know that, to be honest. But, at least with that, I could learn, and not have to learn it completely on my own."

"This is true," Graverobber said walking into the room and dropping heavily onto the couch beside her. "So, what you're telling me is that I've a new apprentice, is that it?"

"If you'll teach me, and I can do it, then I suppose that yes, you do have a new apprentice," Shilo said with a nod, though about a second later she was wondering what she had agreed to. She thought back on herself, wondering where she might have had it in her to be like him. She honestly didn't think that she had it in her, but she really couldn't say until she had tried it. And she hoped that she wasn't about to try it just yet.

"So, what are we doing first then?" she asked still clutching the blanket tightly.

"I thought that we would go bed hunting," Graverobber said with a shrug, as if to say it really didn't matter to him what they did, and maybe it didn't. Shilo didn't know him well enough to read the unusual man, "It's the daytime; you would be an idiot to go robbing graves in the middle of the day. There are people that go and visit those that they cared about during the day, though it isn't something you see as often anymore. But, at night, people are wary of graveyards, as if something is going to jump out of an open grave to drag them to their death. But, the only thing you have to worry about is the guards that might just kill you if you aren't careful."

"Careful, like screaming about the graves while those men prowl around with guns cocked and ready to shoot you?" Shilo asked, a bit of sarcasm dripping through the almost serious question.

"Yes, careful like that," Graverobber said, hearing the sarcasm and responding with some of his own.

Shilo stood, "Well then, we should go and start bed hunting," she said a slight headache bothering her, but it was nothing too serious. She hoped that doing something would get rid of both the lingering cold and the headache settling itself just behind her right eye. Graverobber made a sound that might have been able to pass as an agreement as he stood.

Shilo wondered vaguely where they would go to find this bed. She doubted very much that it would be anything new, but she did wonder where it would come from. Maybe a dumpster. That thought made her prefer to stay on the couch for a while. She hoped, very much so, that the bed would at least come from second hand someone. But when she thought about that, she found it likely that that second hand someone was likely to have gotten a bed out of a dumpster anyway. She sighed, because beggars can't be choosers, and she was now, most assuredly, a beggar. A very dependent beggar, considering she didn't even know where she was.

She followed Graverobber quietly as he weaved his way out of the house and into the alleys that he knew so well, and that she would be growing very familiar with over the next she didn't even know how long. She found herself relieved that she had never really been accident prone, because that was something that was really likely to just mess with the occupation she had so recently committed herself to.

As they walked, Shilo's headache started growing worse, and she continued to ignore it as best she could. But, it was starting to throb unpleasantly. Graverobber stopped for a moment, looking at something that Shilo didn't see. She had her eyes closed, hoping to relieve the pressure of the headache with closed eyes and deep breathing. It helped a little, and that was all she really needed.

Graverobber stopped a little while later in front of a house where a mattress sat on the curbing to be taken with the trash, or really by anyone walking by that grabbed it. He kicked it, and nothing fell apart, and nothing crawled out of it. It didn't smell badly of mold or mildew, only vaguely of sweat and something that's been sitting outside for a day or so. He flipped it over and chuckled to himself. The people that had thrown this mattress outside had not realized that it was a double sided mattress, and the other side was still unused. Dirty, from sitting outside for a while, but not covered in sweat and thicker things like the other side was.

"Got lucky, Kid," he said looking it over with a thrifty eye, "The other side is pretty bad, but this side will do just fine. A little cleaning and it's usable."

Shilo made a face showing distaste, but she didn't complain she could be sleeping in the elements, in conditions worse than this one. At least, that's what she would tell herself until she grew accustomed to her new life.

Graverobber hefted up one side of the mattress and called over to Shilo, "C'mon Kid, lift the other end and let's get this thing back."

Shilo did as she was told, lifting the other side of the mattress, not managing to get it as high off the ground as Graverobber was able, which made it awkward going back to the little boarded up house that he called home. And now that she would be calling home, or at least her shelter.

It took some time to get the mattress back to the little building, and a bit longer to get it into the house. They set it against the wall until they decided where exactly that they would put it. Shilo sat down, the cold had dissipated slightly, but she was tired from all the moving that she wasn't used to. She would definitely have to get more fit if she was going to be able to live this life, and that was something that she knew would take time. But, she didn't think that Graverobber would let her ease her way into things unless she really needed it.

But, she would just dwell on the here and now; concentrate on breathing and continuing to do so until it was all normal again. It wasn't that the mattress had been heavy, or that the distance was too long or difficult, but some combination of efforts that had made things to hard on her. She sat on the couch, her head tilted back resting on the back of the couch, wanting to take a nap and just knowing that Graverobber wasn't about to allow that. There was no time to rest when there were things to be done with that time.

She had never had to work for anything, and now she had been thrust into the unforgiving world that cared not that she had been, until yesterday, taken care of. The world cared not that she had no life skills to help her here. Graverobber might have meant something like this when he had mentioned that she was forced to learn the lessons of the real world. She sighed and opened her eyes to see the very man that she had been thinking about peering down at her.

She sat upright a little too quickly, and would have headbutted Graverobber had he not had quicker reflexes. "Careful Kid, I don't really want to deal with a bloody nose right now," he said, managing to make it sound like a joke and a warning at the same time.

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone to be hovering over me when I opened my eyes," she muttered.

"Well, I think you've taken enough of a rest. Time to head out again, it's almost dark," he said stepping back and a look out a boarded window showed that there was less light on peeking through the gaps in the boards as there had been not too long ago.

"Where are we going?" she asked, almost afraid of what the answer might be.

"We have addicts to service," he said simply and started out of the house.

Shilo kept her emotions to herself, mostly because she wasn't entirely certain what it was that she was feeling; the last time she had seen Graverobber 'service' the Zydrate addicts had been… interesting. And, it would be Zydrate addicts that he would be servicing again, unless he peddled another illegal substance, but there was nothing so popular as Zydrate out there. That much, at least, Shilo knew.

She followed the older man out the door and into the gathering twilight as he headed toward the Zydrate Support Network. It was a good cover for them, hiding in the place that was supposed to be helping them recover. Well, getting another hit could technically be seen as recovering from their withdrawals, but most definitely not their addiction.

She had no idea what she would be doing, but she was sure that there would be something. She wasn't sure that she would even be going if Graverobber didn't have something for her to do.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Zydrate Support Network wasn't much different than the last time she had seen it: full of people who had no lives that may or may not have been waiting here for hours for Graverobber to show up to give them what they wanted most. And what they wanted most wasn't Graverobber, but they would do almost anything to get what he could give them.

It was a disturbing thought, but it was addiction to them. To do anything to get that next fix showed how far that they were gone. Shilo wasn't nearly as afraid this time as she had been last time. Last time she had wondered how she would get home, but felt relief that she was no longer where she had been. Relief because… well, she wasn't entirely sure why she had been relieved to know that she was farther away from all those festivities.

Again, she was here with Graverobber, but, if it weren't for him, she would have no reason to be here. She had nothing to give these people, and no interest in what they wanted, but, Graverobber had brought her here. And he had brought her here again.

She recognized some of the faces that she saw, but she wasn't sure if any of those faces would recognize her. She wasn't even sure if all of them saw her, some of them seemed to have eyes only for Graverobber. She didn't blame them; he had brought them what they were waiting here for. There was little talk going on, now that Graverobber and she had arrived. More he, but she wasn't really thinking about that. She was more watching as they milled around him like lost puppies, some on hands and knees begging like a dog would for a scrap from the table. Then again, these people were more than dogs; they had more in their arsenal than expressive eyes and whines. Their hands caressed along his clothing as they begged and fawned and milled about him like he was their salvation. And he might just have been, Shilo didn't imagine that there would be too many people willing to risk life and limb to dig up a body and shove a needle into its brain for this ever-so popular drug.

"So, you are here, Graverobber," said a voice coming towards Graverobber and Shilo standing near the wall. It was very much like the last time she had been here for the voice belonged to Amber Sweet, only this time she came with more flunkies at her back. Apparently being the owner of the most powerful company in the world would give one more protection. It made sense.

"I didn't expect to see you around here often anymore, Ms. Sweet," Graverobber said, admiration for the woman plain on his face, "One would think that owning GeneCo, you wouldn't need street Zydrate anymore."

Amber Sweet decided not to answer that. She stood there, looking very much like a predatory animal, watching Graverobber as if she were about to pounce. Graverobber looked like it was normal, and it might have been, but Shilo found it unnerving. Amber's hair was a medium brown today, and reached just below her shoulders, where it hung loosely around her face. She was dressed as lasciviously as she always seemed to be, a tight white shirt that showed quite a bit of her stomach and shorts that were tight and short enough that they might as well not have been there. Those shorts definitely weren't long enough to cover to the top of her thigh high tights, which was probably done on purpose, but Shilo wasn't about to start questioning Amber Sweet's fashion tastes.

The addicted woman didn't pounce, but she did start in closer to the supplier, who was still regarding her as if she were something dangerous and that you should worship. Shilo found it sickening. She watched the two play their little game as they had last time until they both stopped and Amber got her hit. She was laid low by the nearly immediate effects of the drug that went right into a person's bloodstream for a few minutes, and during those few minutes Amber's guard surrounded her as if someone would attack her and Graverobber continued his administrations of the gathered addicts as if nothing had happened.

It wasn't until Amber woke that she saw Shilo, and her mood seemed to darken at the very sight. Not good news for Shilo. The woman stood, but made no move to get away from her guards this time. There was no whistling to draw Amber's attention this time, but Amber still found the young woman, and it wasn't a pleasant meeting.

"What brings the girl here?" she demanded, "She turned to Z so soon after they killed that Repoman?"

Shilo flinched at the reminder that was so careless it was almost cruel. Graverobber turned back around, making sure who it was that Amber was talking about, though he already knew.

"Her? No, I found her after that little Opera and brought her back with me," he said seeming almost serious when he spoke, as if something about Amber made him nervous and he wasn't about to show it. So, instead of showing nerves, he showed something else.

"A heart, Graverobber? And here I thought the only things you thought about were Zydrate and sex," Amber said in a purr, and seemed to think for a moment, "Maybe that's why you picked her up. I'm sure she'd be easy enough for you to persuade."

Shilo stayed silent, listening to the encounter didn't seem at all friendly. She didn't really know what she could have done to Amber Sweet to garner this type of treatment. Sure, Graverobber had blamed her for whistling Blind Mag's song last time she had been here, and that had ended less than perfectly, but nothing like that had happened this time and she couldn't think of anything else that could have gotten her this type of… animosity from the woman.

Graverobber shrugged, taking the insults in stride, "I saw the Kid, she needed help. I guess I just couldn't resist," he said, and that was that, he didn't try and offer more of an excuse than that one.

Amber turned on Shilo and gave her a look that would have done Medusa proud before turning and striding out of the room, her guards following her, ready to catch her when she collapsed from the Zydrate still running rampant in her system.

Once Amber was out of sight, Shilo turned to Graverobber, her eyes confused and more than a little frightened at what had just happened. Graverobber shot up his last addict and turned to the young woman, "It's time to get out of here."

Shilo didn't argue, she didn't know why Graverobber had brought her there in the first place since he hadn't said anything about it, but she didn't think it had included the little parlay with Amber Sweet.

"I think she hates me," Shilo said once they were out in the streets again.

"That's what it looks like, Kid," he responded, leading the way back to the house.

"But why? What does she think that I've ever done to her to make her hate me?" Shilo asked, hurrying to keep up.

"You really are naïve, Kid, it was your name on Rotti Largo's will, not hers. Or either of her brothers', so I wouldn't be surprised if none of them like you," Graverobber said, looking over one shoulder at her.

"But, I didn't accept that. I didn't want anything to do with it. Even if I did, the cost was too much," Shilo protested.

"Does it matter? Amber sees you as a threat because she has no idea why he would choose you over her or any of her siblings," Graverobber said with a shrug.

"How do you know that?" Shilo asked, confused.

"I've dealt with Amber for a while now. Not only that though, if you were in her shoes, wouldn't you feel the same way?" he asked in response.

Shilo started to say that she wouldn't feel the same way, but she stopped in the middle of taking the breath to reply. Instead, she said, "I don't know."

"Good answer, Kid," Graverobber said in that voice that he could have, the one that stated quite plainly that he was simply humoring the person he was talking to.

Shilo tried her best not to respond to the treatment the way that an insolent child would. She succeeded, but only just. She found her earlier headache coming back, and she was wondering what had caused this one. For some reason, she didn't think it had anything to do with the fetid scent of homeless people that made her want to crawl in a hole until her head stopped wanting to burst. She sat down then, putting her head in her hands, afraid that her headache would make her throw up.

That made Graverobber pause and look at her, and for a moment he thought that it was memories that were bothering her. After that first thought though, it seemed that something else was wrong with her. He walked over to her and knelt, staring at her for a few moments. When that didn't get a reaction from her, he put one of his grimy hands to her forehead.

"What's up, Kid?" he asked, trying to keep his usual joking affect but faltering.

Shilo shook her head, not speaking or looking at him.

"Look at me, Kid," Graverobber ordered, though it seemed a bit too soft for something that's supposed to be harsher.

She did, whether it was shock from the tone in his voice or it was just the words, but she looked up at him, and he didn't like what he saw.

"How long, Kid?" he asked.

"How long what?" she asked in response.

"How long have you been addicted?"  
"I don't know what you mean…"

"Course you do, it's your life; you must have known you were taking something."

"Taking something…?" she asked herself and then it hit her like a ton of bricks. A ton of bricks that was plain on her face, "My dad drugged my blood to keep me sick."

Graverobber raised an eyebrow, saying nothing for a moment or two, closer to two, before he found his voice again.

"Is that so, Kid? How long did he do that?" he asked, trying to get things into perspective.

"I would say most of my life, since I was two at the latest, I guess," she said calmly, more calmly than she should have been, making Graverobber hope that she wouldn't go back into shock with the information.

"That's quite a time to be addicted to something. Gonna be hard to break that," he said almost to himself, tapping his forefinger against his chin.

Shilo sighed, it was just what she needed to be hearing about now, that she was going to have to face something difficult yet again. And, by the sounds of it this was going to take a long time to get rid of, if she could.

"Is there any way that it'll just… go away?" she asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping for a miracle anyway.

Graverobber barked out a laugh, "Kid, nothing in this life is easy. If you really want it then you'll go for it, even if it's hard."

"I know, I was just hoping that things would be simple just this once," she muttered to herself, "I never thought that I would have to deal with addiction."

"No one ever thinks that they'll have to deal with it. They think they'll be the one that doesn't get addicted, that they can do it just that once, or whenever they feel like it, and there won't be any consequences." Graverobber told her in a low, almost sympathetic, voice, "They're never that special, lucky person."

Shilo gave a short, self-deprecating laugh then shook her head, "Can we leave now?" she asked, staring around at the empty streets filled with trash. She noted that more public service vehicles were used now to pick up the bodies that Repomen left behind than they did trash. Shilo didn't count the bodies as trash, they had once been people, and it was only through murder that they weren't people anymore. Any other form of murder was still illegal, but her father had been perfectly within the law when he took a life. She sighed, able to take a small comfort in that everything that her father did in his real line of work was legal.

She stood again, waiting for Graverobber to join her and lead the way to… wherever they were going. He did so, walking next to her, but in a way that she could still follow his lead, since she had no idea where they were going. Graverobber wasn't really sure where they were going either, but at least he wasn't nearly as likely to get them lost.

"So, what now?" Shilo asked, her voice more or less calm.

"Hmm…?" Graverobber said in response, urging her to go on without words.

"What are we doing now?" She said again, "You've gotten me a bed like you promised, and you've tended to the needs of the Z addicts… what now?"

"Now, we find something to eat," he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. It had been several hours since that sandwich, and Shilo's stomach was, indeed, telling her that she needed to pay it some more attention.

Shilo nodded at the idea, following the lead of her stomach. She looked at him, waiting for him to say something about what they would be eating, or how they would get it. She hoped it wasn't dumpster diving, but she supposed that there were worse ways to get her nourishment.

Graverobber lead the way to wherever he was planning to get them something to eat.

* * *

[A/N: Another chapter. I don't like the ending, but... meh. As always, please read and review. Again, disclaimer says that my name isn't Terrance, nor is it Darren, so I don't own this... only various signed paraphernalia. I went back and reread the previous chapters and found some of the poor wording, sorry about that, I'll try to avoid it in the future. Umm... I don't think that I have anything else to say. Until next time.]


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

After they had eaten, Graverobber lead the way… wherever. She didn't know where he was heading; then again she hadn't asked. It was dark now, several hours after full dark, actually. Shilo understood that in the dark, in the shadows, Graverobber must have been safer moving around the city. Easier to hide from prying eyes.

Thinking this, Shilo followed quietly, using the time to think. About what, well, there was definitely enough going on to keep her preoccupied for hours, probably days. She didn't even think it had been a full day since the Opera, and already she had, more or less, "apprenticed" herself to the Graverobber that had pulled her from the dank alleyway, and had figured out that she had to struggle with an addiction to the drug that her father had been feeding her.

Shilo's hands balled into fists as she walked. She didn't want to think about her father's faults. Not yet. She was just now realizing that her father had been… more than he had seemed. Not even in his lies: being a Repoman, especially. He had said that he was different; he had been right. He had been drugging her, and she doubted that he had ever intended to "find" her cure. And now her father was dead and she didn't have access to whatever drug her father had been medicating her with. She didn't think he had ever meant for this to happen, and she couldn't be angry with him. No, instead she was sad. Was it pity?

She sighed and forced her hands to ease. She had told herself that she wasn't going to think about this, yet here she was. Thinking about it.

She looked up, and stopped. She didn't see Graverobber where she should have been. She looked around and he was nowhere to be found. A pair of what looked like GENCops walked past her, peering suspiciously. She watched them watch her and then they were past her, to the end of the street, took ad left, and were gone.

Shilo heard a noise come from her right and swung around to face it, her heart clogging her throat with fear. Graverobber stepped out of the dark alley. Of course it was an alley. He _would _hide from them, Shilo assumed, though she was fairly certain that they could only kill him on sight in a graveyard. She wondered vaguely how often the GENCops accidentally killed a mourner, thinking that they were Graverobbers harvesting Zydrate from those that they were visiting.

"C'mon, Kid," he said, his voice low, as he stepped back into the dim light of the alley.

"Where are we going?" Shilo asked, no longer able to contain her curiosity any longer. Though, it wasn't really going back into the alleys that made her curiosity unbearable.

Graverobber just grinned at her and grabbed her arm to tug her along with him. Shilo didn't exactly trust that look, and it made her wonder even more where exactly he was taking her. She followed after him, her arm still in his clutches, at a trot stumbling occasionally on the uneven ground in front of her as she walked awkwardly at the quickened pace that his gait created.

Shilo assumed that that was the best answer that she would be getting, so she decided to just go with it. She would find out where they were going when they got there.

They wandered at their quick gait through one alleyway and another and another and another. She thought she recognized a few of them. Eventually she would be able to weave her way through these unpleasant alleys just as well as Graverobber could. And eventually she wouldn't find them nearly as unpleasant as they were now.

With the quick pace and awkward gait, Shilo got tired quickly and was soon out of breath.

"Slow… down…" she begged between gasps of breath.

Graverobber stopped and looked at her, "What's wrong, Kid?" he asked, wondering if it was some symptom of her withdrawal.

"Your legs are too long," she grumbled.

Graverobber chuckled, "I'm more than twice your age, Kid."

"Yeah, well, I need to catch my breath," Shilo said bracing her hands on her knees.

Graverobber shook his head, still smirking, "Gotta build up that stamina quick. It could mean the difference between life and death."

Shilo groaned, "Please tell me that I'm going to be able to build up my stamina without risking my neck."

"No better way to do it than with your life on the line," Graverobber said with that famous grin, turning and walking away.

"You're kidding, right?" Shilo said, voice coated with alarm as she rushed to catch up. The feeling in her gut was tight and solid when she didn't get a response.

The next time Graverobber stopped they were standing outside of a cemetery.

"Oh no, oh no, no, no," Shilo said, now having some sneaking suspicions about where they were going and what they were doing.

Graverobber chuckled again "You said would be my apprentice, gotta start somewhere Kid."

Shilo groaned. There were sure to be GENCops in there, ready and willing to kill them both. She was going to get them both killed. She didn't want to get them both killed. She had just escaped Death by Graveyard yesterday. She didn't want to risk that again.

"You aren't going to be screaming, are you?" she asked nervously.

He shook his head, "This cemetery is outdoors, it's easier to get in and out of and the people buried here were generally poorer than those buried in indoor cemeteries. But, they weren't just tossed somewhere, so they weren't dirt poor, and they probably had some sort of family. So there are fewer guards here than would be indoors, but it isn't empty.

"Since there are fewer guards and it's easier to get in and out of, it also means that more of the bodies in here are already harvested," Graverobber told her in a whisper, more or less teaching her a lesson about general… graverobbing.

With that, Graverobber peered through the gaps in the wrought iron fence, probably looking for the nearest guard and where their attention happened to be. After a few moments of silent, cautious searching, he turned back to Shilo. He got close enough that she could feel his breath on her ear.

"You might be small enough to slip through the fencing, if not, you have to climb," he said. And then he was gone, climbing deftly up and over the fence and kneeling on the other side behind a cracked tombstone. He knelt there frozen and alert, once again searching for guards. He knelt there frozen for almost a minute, until Shilo was certain that his muscles would cramp, before he motioned for her to follow.

She placed a tentative hand on each of the bars nearest her. Between those two bars was a large spider web. She may have been fascinated by bugs, but she didn't really like the idea of walking through the web and being covered in spider silk for… however long it would be before she got to bathe again. She glanced to the left and to the right, seeing webs there as well, and very little choice otherwise except going up and over the fence. There was a noise off to the left and the heard Graverobber hiss, "Hide, Kid!"

Shilo backed away from the fence and lurked next to a trash can as if she were digging through it like so many people were forced to do in this city. She watched a guard creep by on the other side of the fence, she started digging through the trash. She grimaced as she felt something slimy and fuzzy in her hand. She pulled it out and found that it was a molding banana peel. She muttered something under her breath about how gross mold was and kept at her rifling until the guard that had almost caught her was out of sight again. After the inconvenient guard was gone, Shilo returned to the fence, this time, she decided that she would rather live and be covered in spider silk than dead and not covered in it, so she stood sideways and sidled her way carefully through the two bars hoping that she didn't get stuck.

As luck would have it, she didn't get stuck, and no guards came round the corner as she was slipping through. As soon as she was on the right side of the fence, Graverobber grabbed her by the arm and tugged her down so that she was also kneeling behind the cracked tombstone. The tombstone wasn't big enough to hide both of them, but Graverobber didn't intend to stay there long enough to be seen crouching behind a mortuary stone.

He grabbed her arm and tugged her along as he ran, still crouched almost double, across a road where they were most likely to be seen. Once across the road, Graverobber lead the way to the wall of a tomb which was hidden from view by the thick brambles of close growing and unkempt trees and bushes.

Graverobber paused once he was sure that they were out of sight of the road and any guards that might be prowling it. He put a finger to his lips, though he didn't think that she was about to say anything.

He knelt them down until they were almost sitting before he leaned in once again, again close enough that Shilo could feel his breath tickling at her ear when he went on with the next part of his lesson.

"We have to go to the place most likely not to have been harvested in a place like this. Most likely it's the places that are most likely to be seen, but we aren't going there tonight. Tonight we're going to go to the middle of the cemetery, I don't care if we get anything, you just need the practice," he intoned.

Shilo nodded and followed Graverobber through the brambles that wanted to become part of her arms until they reached another part of the cemetery. They paused often listening to footsteps, watching for the guards, and being alert of anything else that might mean that someone had seen them or was suspicious that they were there. In the end, they made it to the other side of the graveyard without being shot and Graverobber stood above a grave that was still sealed.

"You never actually dig up a grave, or, I don't. It takes too much time and makes you more likely to be caught. The stone tombs are easiest; all you do is push them open and pull the body out. Make sure there're no guards around and push the tomb open all at once. Just don't let the cover fall, it'll have every guard in this place on your ass in an instant," he said, and stood back to allow Shilo to do what he had told her to do.

She looked around and saw no one, so she leaned over and braced herself against the edge of the tomb and pushed as hard as she could. The giant stone cover was hard to move, but after a moment of it not budging, she got it to slide open with a great effort on her part.

Graverobber stepped forward again, "You don't have to pull the body out of the grave if you don't want to, but it helps you stay closer to the ground so if a guard happens by you aren't as immediately noticeable," he lifted the body out of the grave and dropped it on the ground with a thud.

It was half decomposed and smelled absolutely putrid. Shilo didn't remember the smell having been so bad as this yesterday; she didn't know if this body was older, or newer, or anything, but it smelled bad and she clapped a hand over her nose firmly and tried to breathe through her mouth only. But, once you smell death, it stays, thick and palpable on your tongue and in the back of your throat. Shilo forced down bile, she would have to be able to do this without flinching if she was going to survive.

She forced herself to kneel by the body as Graverobber pulled out his kit of graverobbing necessities, though she had only ever seen him use one of those tools, and pull out the needle that she had seen him use on other bodies before. He handed the device to her and she held it like it was going to sting her as she stared at him like he had lost his mind.

"Don't look at me like that," he told her and gestured to the body as if revealing a long lost treasure, "Just shove it up his nose and pull back on the plunger; you'll know if it worked or not."

Shilo thought several things in those few seconds before she took that last fateful step, most of those things weren't exactly friendly either. But, after a moment or two, really it was two or three moments as Graverobber knelt on the other side of the body keeping watch while she hesitated, Shilo stuck the needle into the corpse's brain as far as she could make it go and pulled on the plunger. It was strange, as if there were some sort of resistance to her pulling on the plunger, but Shilo assumed that that was only because of where the end of the strange needle was resting. To her surprise, the casing of the needle actually started to collect glowing blue liquid. When she realized that she was harvesting an illegal and highly addictive glowing blue substance from a corpse that had been dead she didn't want to know how long, she tried to avoid either hyperventilating or throwing up. She was very proud of herself when she managed not to do either thing.

"Congratulations Kid, you've harvested your first corpse," Graverobber said in a low voice, "Now, one of the last things to mention is that when leaving a graveyard, you never leave the same way you came in. We're going to sneak our way to the nearest exit and leave there."

He had been putting the body back in its grave and replacing the stone slab while he said this. He took the Zydrate gun from Shilo and lead the way to the nearest fence where they could sneak out undetected, ever wary of the guards watchful eye.

* * *

[A/N: I'm so glad that I have so many people that like this story so far, I really hope not to disappoint. This chapter is dedicated to everyone that's reviewed, favorited, or put this story on their alerts. To be honest, I actually like this one, unlike the last few, which I thought were pretty sub-par. Apparently I write better while in class because that's where the main plot of this one was written.

Disclaimer: I really hope you realize by now that my name is not Terrance or Darren.... to be either of those people would require me to... well, get a sex change for one thing. Anyway, let's just say that I don't own Repo! The Genetic Opera or any of the characters, lyrics, dialogue, and so on therein. This is why we call it _fan_fiction, my friends.... though it would be interesting to think of Terrance writing fanfics of something that's his and posting it here. Here's to the off chance that he's lurking around here and reading this [/toasts] because I know if I created something worthy of fanfiction that I'd be reading it.

Don't mind me, it's late as I'm posting this, but I vowed that I would get it posted before I went to bed because you all made me so happy with your reviews and favorites and alerts. Things like that just inspire me to write more for you to keep you happy, because that's why I write, to make people happy. I think I'm going to do something that I've never done before and respond to some of the reviews, feel free to skip this part if you want.... if you got this far in the first place. I really just won't shut up tonight...

MarluxiaLuver14: Yay Kingdom Hearts! [/ahem] I'm really glad that you liked the story so much to favorite it, thanks for being my first review for the story~

: Thanks, I'm glad you like it and I'm glad to know that you think that I'm keeping Graverobber in character, at least up until chapter two. I'm doing my best, and I hope that you enjoy the upcoming chapters.

Butterflies and Roses: I'm glad you liked it. I noticed all of the awkward phrasing when I (finally) went back and reread the chapters at a decent hour (decent being that I had had at least three hours of sleep and been awake for at least two hours before reading the previous chapters) I fixed them on my saved file on Word, not that that helps much here. Maybe once school slows down a bit, since I just started my spring semester a week ago, I'll actually do that. If I'm not writing new chapters in my spare time.... in class. .; And I'll try not to let your obsession down~

Kristy B: Thanks for the review, I'm glad that you like it so far and that you think that I'm keeping your friendly neighborhood Graverobber in character. It's really good to hear, because I get paranoid about some things with him, so hearing it makes me slightly less paranoid every time I hear it... if that made sense.

Grave robber groupie: I'm glad that you're liking it so far. As for the brother/sister relationship, Graverobber can be quite protective of his new ward. I hope that you keep reading.

TimeBomb Tick: I got two reviews from you, in a row, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm really glad that you're liking it so very much and that you're enjoying my portrayal of Graverobber and find it believable, he's a really hard character to write for.

Kristy B (again, because you're awesome): I wanted to address your second review separately because it was so long. Don't worry, I don't think that you're flaming me, merely expressing your opinion. And as for Graverobber's adoration.... well, I put that in there for a reason. It shall come back up eventually [/devious smile] I just like to keep you on pins and needles (Zydrate coated needles, of course) for what might happen~

Future-Little-Mrs.-Teddy-Lupin: Your name is long, you might need a nickname. I'm glad you like the story so far. I realize that the Shilo Addiction plot is getting to be really popular, which is why I'm not really going to make it a focus, but I just don't think that it would be believable that a person wouldn't become addicted to something that they took for their entire life as they knew it, so I couldn't not include it with a clear conscience. I hope that you keep reading~

Now that that's done, I hope you all continue to read and review my humble obsession. Until next time~]


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

As they were walking their ways through the alleys back to Graverobber's home, and Graverobber had pocketed the Zydrate gun in one deep pocket of his an coat, and the vial of Zydrate in another pocket, he glanced at her.

"You're going to need warmer clothes," he said. Shilo thought that it seemed out of the blue; then again, she was still wearing the strapless little black dress from the Opera the night before. Had it really been only yesterday? She hadn't noticed, maybe her mind had forced her not to notice. Her dress, her skin, her wig, all were matted with blood, and now spider's silk. Mustn't forget the spider's silk.

The very thought of still being drenched in her father's blood made her more nauseous than any fetid corpse. She took three steps away from Graverobber and threw up on the side of the building. It wasn't the worst thing in that alley.

"I-I need to bathe," she said when she came back to Graverobber, shaking like a leaf.

"We'll find you someplace to wash up after we find clothes for you," Graverobber said.

"Where will we be finding those new clothes?" she asked suspiciously.

Graverobber laughed at the boarded door to his home and pulling it open. He was already inside before he answered, "Depends, we might be able to find something in a dumpster, but most people just don't throw old clothes away."

Shilo looked at him quizzically. If they couldn't dumpster dive, then where would they go? The look granted her another one of Graverobber's ironic chuckles.

"Thrift store, Kid," he said simply.

"What if you're recognized? I mean, you're a wanted man," Shilo protested.

"Believe it or not Kid, but no one really wants to deal with GENCops enough to get me caught. It's not like I'm hurting them," he told her.

Graverobber disappeared into a part of the house that Shilo hadn't seen yet; actually, she hadn't been past the living room where that mattress was still sitting. He came back, pulling a hand out of one of his pockets.

"Let's go, Kid," he said and led the way out of the house once again.

It was really late, and Shilo didn't think that any place would be open at this hour. Not to mention, she was tired and wanted to do to bed more than just about anything.

But he led the way with a purpose, and Shilo followed him knowing that he knew a lot more than she did about how the city ran. She found herself, after fifteen minutes of walking, standing outside a small, dimly lit shop with a flickering neon sign proclaiming that it was open.

Graverobber walked in and Shilo followed, looking around. There were appliances, there were clothes, there were books, there was food, and there was sports equipment. There were all sorts of things, and Graverobber headed for the women's section. He started by looking at things like winter coats, and other heavy articles of clothing. Sometimes his lips would move, but no sound would come out, until he turned to her with another lesson.

"You don't look for clothes like this. They look warm, and they are, but it's bulky. It'll slow you down, inhibit your movement, and they're usually made of some material that'll make a lot of noise when you move; it'll rub against itself or something else, someone will hear it, and you're fucked," he told her.

"What you want," he said, moving down the aisle, "Is layers. Nothing too baggy, you might stumble over that," he pulled out a long sleeved shirt and handed it to Shilo, "Will that fit you?"

Shilo looked at it, plain black faded so much it was more of a gray and stretched out from overuse. She glanced at the tag; a large, "Definitely not."

He seemed undaunted, truthfully, he had gone right back to looking after handing her the shirt. He was already rifling through more shirts. He pulled out another one and tossed it towards her. She caught it and put back the other one before looking at the new one. It was white and button-down, long sleeves were slightly loose with a buttoned wrist cuff. It had a high neck line, which would probably rest about midway up her neck. It was a little dressy, but looked almost new, and according to the tag, was her size.

"This one'll fit," she told Graverobber who merely nodded while looking at other shirts. He picked up a bright green tee-shirt, stared at it for maybe five seconds, and then put it back to do the same thing with a light gray halter. He handed her the third shirt, which was a dark red tank top, the material was thin and stretchy and really long. It was different, but the tag said that it would fit, so she would wear it.

Graverobber had moved on to look at pants and Shilo started walking to join him, but something caught her eye so she stopped to see what it was. It was a black corset, a real one with steel boning and panels. She stared at it for a while, marveling.

"Get it if you want it," Graverobber said, still looking at the pants. Shilo shifted awkwardly, until she finally grabbed it and wandered over to Graverobber, who was still looking at those pants. "I don't know your size, you find something," he said and wandered elsewhere.

Shilo gaped at Graverobber as he walked away, then shrugged and turned to the rack of hanging pants and started sifting for her size. She wondered if Graverobber felt awkward standing in a store shopping with a teenage girl. She smiled to herself, this was the Graverobber, that cocky bastard, fawned over by addicts and screaming in the face of danger. Yeah, he would never feel awkward. Ever.

She paused at a pair of pants in her size, it was only the third pair that she had seen that would fit her. She liked this pair best so far, black and only slightly faded with use, though the left knee was ripped. She grabbed them and kept looking in case she found something she liked better. She found another four pairs in her size, but either they were in a sad state or she just didn't like them. After another few minutes of browsing, she went to find Graverobber. He had a leather belt in his hand, which he tossed onto the pile of clothes Shilo was holding.

"Now you need a coat and shoes," Graverobber said. He led the way around the store to where the coats hung on racks. He rifled through them as he had with the shirts. He pulled out a faded black trench coat. It only had one button and reached… she didn't know where it would reach on her. It seemed… well, it would work. Graverobber didn't even ask for her opinion about it, just grinned and it joined the pile. Then they wandered around until they got to the shoes. They were mostly boots, and Shilo went straight for those. She searched, and there was only one pair in her size that would be wearable. They were knee-high, steel toes with two-inch platforms and buckles going all the way up until the boot ended. Actually, they were about half a size too big, but with the belts and height of the boot, Shilo doubted it would be going anywhere.

"Is that all?" Shilo asked.

Graverobber thought for a moment, looking around the secondhand store, "You still have that bag you were wearing in the graveyard that first time?" he asked.

Shilo had to think for a moment to figure out what he was talking about, then said, "It's in my father's house… unless someone's already gotten to it."

Graverobber thought for half a minute, "Go grab another bag," he said, "You aren't ready to go back there."

Shilo wandered into the next aisle where there were lines of bags and purses. She stared at the line for a few minutes before seeing a gray messenger bag, she picked it up and examined it, finding that it was sturdy and would probably hold whatever she would need it for.

She turned and jumped when she saw Graverobber already standing behind her; she hadn't heard him come up, and he grinned at her for it, "Now we're done," he said, leading the way to the cashier where he paid, Shilo had never thought she'd see him pay for anything, and then they left to go back to the small, rundown house.

Back at the house, Graverobber handed Shilo the bag full of clothes, "Go change, I'll put your bed somewhere," he said, walking into the living room.

"Uhhh…" Shilo said, feeling awkward and shifting from foot to foot.

Graverobber paused, then turned around, put a hand on her shoulder, and bought her to the bathroom down the hall and to the right. There, he turned on the spout and a weak stream of water jetted into the tub.

"Water pressure here isn't that great, so you've gotta take a bath. Adjust the heat here, turn it off with this nozzle, and here's the drain plug," he said, pointing out various nozzles and a switch before getting up to leave her be, "Careful not to drink the water," Then he was gone.

Shilo cringed at the thought of what might be in the water, considering how often bodies were just dumped anywhere. She took off her wig, trying to brush it with her fingers before doing her best to clean it out and salvage it and setting it aside to dry while she bathed. She stripped down to nothing and piled the blood stiff clothing in a corner and stepped into the wonderfully warm water, watching the blood fleck off of her skin and stain the water faintly pink. She soaked and soaked, waiting for the blood to disappear from her skin and ruby body oils and grime from her body.

She got out of the tub and looked around. She didn't have a towel. She sighed and glanced at her clothes; she didn't know what to do with them. She didn't know how to wash them, and there were no tags, so she grabbed them and tossed them into the cooling water and watched the blood seep out of them. She poked at the fabric hoping to get more of the blood out and wondering vaguely if she was ruining it. She picked them up and wrung them out watching pink water drain. Her skin was dry enough now that she could finally get dressed and pulled the plug from the drain.

She donned the pants first before staring at the three shirts wondering which one went first. She decided to start with the white button down, the shirt was fitted except for the sleeves, which were loose enough to get in the way and the wrist cuffs were fastened in such a way that the sleeves were away from her hands at all times. Next came the dark red tank top slipped over her head, it was form fitting and clung to her figure through the other shirt she was wearing, showing all of those contours as well as all of her own, the material was thin and stretchy, and, best of all it was comfortable. She pulled it down and it reached down below her pelvis. Then there was the black corset. It was already laced, and she slipped into it, fastening the line of steel clasps, and realized that it needed to be tightened. She shifted from foot to foot awkwardly before going to crack open the door, remembering to slip her mostly dry wig back on.

"Graverobber?" she called, and heard Graverobber return a questioned response, "Do you know how to tie a corset?"

She heard him chuckle, followed by movement heading her way. Shilo turned red, the flush creeping across her neck and face, then Graverobber was there, grinning down at her as if it were the greatest joke he'd heard in a while. Shilo stepped into the hallway, still red with embarrassment and not wanting to meet his gaze. She turned her back on him so he could get to the laces.

"You might want to brace yourself against the wall," he told her, the laughter still there in his voice. Shilo did as she was suggested and braced her arms against the wall, half expecting the corset to slide down her torso when she did so, but Graverobber had already gotten a good hold on it. Graverobber untied the laces and started tugging at it with enough force that it was all Shilo could do to stay upright. No wonder he had told her to brace herself, she'd have fallen without warning. After a few minutes, Graverobber's arms wrapped around her, making her jump, the flush returning to her. But Graverobber was only wrapping the excess around her waist before tying it in place.

"Still jumpy, Kid," he said as he stepped back. Shilo straightened and muttered her thanks. She had never worn a corset before, not like this one, and found that she could barely breathe.

She went back into the bathroom to finish getting dressed. She buckled the belt around her waist, bypassing the belt loops on her pants for the simple reason that they were covered by the dark red tank top, and just let it sit freely on her waist. It would be annoying when she sat down and it moved, but she would deal with it. She slipped into the trench coat, which reached just below her knees, and buttoned the single button, which was just below her breasts, framing them. The coat was tight, a bit too small, but she could wear it, tight through the torso and flaring at the waist. A glance into the mirror told Shilo that she liked the look.

She pulled up the pant legs to put on her boots before pulling the material back into place, grabbed the messenger bag, and walked out of the bathroom. Graverobber was still in the hall, leaning against the wall.

"Looking good, Kid," he said, looking her up and down, but the look didn't seem sexual. That didn't stop Shilo from blushing, which made Graverobber chuckle.

"You're on your way to becoming a Graverobber," he said turning to walk down the hall. Shilo followed, not knowing where else to go. He led her to the living room and the fire in the fireplace. Her mattress was sitting against the wall in a corner, two sides of the mattress against the wall against walls, a blanket piled on top of it. Graverobber sat in his recliner and Shilo on the couch in front of the fire.

She wondered at what would happen next. She hoped that it involved sleep, because she was exhausted. She hadn't seen a clock anywhere in ages; either there hadn't been one or she had missed it, like she was missing so many things lately.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"About four," he responded.

Shilo threw herself back onto the couch with a groan, almost displacing her wig. No wonder she was so tired.

"Go to bed, Kid," she was told.

She pulled herself upright, "Where do you sleep?"

"You're sitting on it," he said with a grin.

She stood up feeling embarrassed, "Is it a pull-out?"

Graverobber stood, shaking his head, "Just a couch, Kid."

"Oh… well," she said awkwardly, something in her just didn't feel right having a bed when her host didn't, "The beds big enough for two people."

Graverobber laughed, "Don't worry about it Kid."

He waved Shilo to her mattress and stretched out on the couch. His feet hung off the edge. Shilo lay down, and had a quick mental struggle about whether to keep the wig on or not. On the one hand, she would likely ruin it if she slept in it. On the other, she didn't think that Graverobber knew she was bald yet, and didn't know how he would react. In the end, she decided to keep the wig for as long as she could and take it off while she slept, she would deal with the awkward staring or silence or whatever awaited her in the morning.

* * *

[A/N: Another chapter done, sorry that this one took so long. I blame classes that are taking over my life. Sorry that there is so much talk about clothes, really, I am, I'm not entirely sure how it got that out of hand. I'm also sorry that Graverobber is, once again, out of character. But, I did put a few little things in there that may, or may not, have a deeper meaning if you catch my drift. [/nudgenudge] Hope you enjoy it, even with the poor portrayal of Graverobber.

Now, to you amazing reviewers:

TimeBombTick: Oh really, I had thought that the plot device was pretty common by now. It's good to know that it isn't horrendously overdone already. =D Thanks for the review~!

Mepper22: I'm so glad to hear that you think this is one of the most realistic fics that you've read~ I'm curious about the one that you mentioned, do you mind telling me which fic that this other one was? I'm always looking for good fics to read. I'm also glad that I've got passed your critical mind, I love to hear that I've passed a person's 'test' or whatnot. It just makes my day~ Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter. Stalk away~!

Akito Megumi: Yes, more people must be introduced to Repo! Thank your friends for getting you addicted to the knife.... I mean, Repo! I hope you keep reading and enjoying and fangirling over the amazingness of Repo! (Have I mentioned Repo!?)

Future-Little-Mrs.-Teddy- Lupin: Yes, be a fugitive Shilo! I'm sorry that this update took so long! .;

SunrunnersFirebird: Thanks for the support! If I had a vial of Zydrate, I would totally give it to you (not really, I would keep it for myself and hoard it like the nut I am). Thanks for pointing that out, I really should go and fix that little blemish on the story. I thought that something seemed off when I was rereading it as I typed it up, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I guess that's what I get for writing in Biology class, instead of in front of my television, where I can fangirl and type at the same time. I'll try and keep an eye out for things like that in the future. Oh, and HARDCORE REPO! FANS: UNITE! I'm done now. .;

One final thing: Read and review, pretty please with a vial of Zydrate drizzled over the top? I wonder if it would have the same effect if it wasn't injected, but ingested... I doubt it though, because it isn't going straight to the blood stream... anyway, reviews show me your love and give me inspiration~ (Not to seem pushy or anything, it's just true). I'll try not to keep you hanging for so long next time, as long as school isn't being evil.]


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Graverobber wasn't lucky enough to escape the ghosts two nights in a row. Someone looking at him wouldn't be able to tell the difference that he was plagued by nightmares; he didn't toss and turn or cry out in anyway. Only a single groan as he rolled over, one that might be passed off as anything. He woke up once, visions of corpses accusing him with eyes that were shriveled and lidless, wanting to know why he had defiled them; but he would always brush it off; what did it matter, they were dead, they didn't really care. He rose halfway into a sitting position before just falling back. He glanced over at Shilo, completely shrouded in darkness, and wondered what he was thrusting her into. But she was strong, she could handle it.

Shilo didn't have the same problems that Graverobber. She had been so exhausted that a deep, dreamless sleep had overcome her. She twitched as Graverobber watched her, but she kept on sleeping. Graverobber closed his eyes to the darkness just before dawn. He wouldn't let his late night nightmares keep him from waking up early. He would let Shilo sleep though; this was, after all, still new to her. But for now, a little more sleep was in order.

In another two hours the sun had finally risen behind a thin veil of clouds, making the sun seem pale and watery. And Graverobber was awake, pulling himself to his feet, and after a full body stretch to urge his system back into fully functional awareness, he glanced at Shilo pausing, noticing for the first time that her hair was not her own. Did that bother him? No, not really. But he did stand there watching her for a moment or two longer than was appropriate before stepping out of the room for a few minutes, returning with food with a sandwich and something to drink, and sitting on the couch to eat.

While he was still eating, Shilo moved, pulling the covers over her face to block out the sun with a groan where she stayed for a few more minutes before sitting up, looking disheveled, wig in hand. She saw Graverobber sitting there and didn't even try to delude herself into thinking that he might not have seen her. She put on the wig and stood.

"Morning Kid," he said in between bites.

"I was hoping to be up before you," she said.

"Why? To hide your baldness?" Graverobber asked, Shilo merely nodded and he went on, "People go bald as a fashion statement, don't worry about it. I'd guess it's a side effect of whatever your father was giving you. Maybe now that you're off of it, it'll start to grow back."

Shilo managed to give him a weak grin as he sat there, half eaten sandwich still in his hand as he looked at her, making sure that he had gotten his point across. She appreciated it, but she didn't think that she would be going for the bald fashion statement.

"There's food in the kitchen," Graverobber said.

Shilo nodded then made it three steps toward the door before finally stopping, "Where is the kitchen?"

Graverobber chuckled, "Down the hall, last door on the right."

This time, Shilo made it out of the room. She took a detour in the bathroom and when she finally got to the kitchen she saw fruit on the counter. She found an apple, tested it, and found that it was ripe. She took a bite, not washing it because she still didn't trust the water. It was good, but not particularly filling. She wanted more, and started rummaging through the cabinets. She found the bread and peanut butter and wondered if she could find jam or something, so she wandered over to the refrigerator to look inside. It was pretty bare, but there was apple juice, and she found a jar of blueberry preserves near the back. She took it out, and the apple juice, and made herself a sandwich and poured a glass of juice. After a bit more rummaging to find what she needed, like plates and a knife, she was contentedly munching on her sandwich.

She leaned against the counter while she ate, happy to be putting something in her stomach, and especially happy for the juice since it was nice and cold running down her throat. She stood there for a few minutes after she finished the sandwich and glass of juice before wandering back into the living room. She heard Graverobber in the bathroom as she passed. It felt good to know that Graverobber was still human enough to have human needs and the need to succumb to them, though it really shouldn't have been that surprising.

She sat on the couch to wait, not letting herself wonder how it could ever even cross her mind that Graverobber could conquer the call of nature. No matter how people viewed and treated him, he wasn't a god.

Graverobber walked into the room while Shilo was thinking about not thinking about Graverobber relieving his bladder. And she blushed, feeling like she had been caught.

"What's the matter, Kid?" Graverobber asked, that grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, like he knew what she was thinking and found it amusing.

"N-no, I was just wondering what we were doing today," she stammered.

Graverobber's grin widened, "I haven't decided yet. I'll be peddling later, but I don't have much to do for a few hours."

"So… what does that mean..?" Shilo asked.

"Kick back and relax," he said, falling into the chair with closed eyes.

"Relax?" she said, not bothering to hide her surprise at the idea. Graverobber opened an eye into a slit while he chuckled and nodded.

Shilo sat there, staring at nothing. She didn't know what to do with herself now that she had time on her hands. She fidgeted for a few minutes, looking around the room as if it would throw something for her to do out of the walls. Graverobber grew tired of hearing her fidget very quickly and sat up with open eyes.

"What d'you want to do, Kid?" he asked.

"I dunno. Something. Anything." She said as she wrung her hands.

"C'mon Kid," he said grabbing one of her wrists, "We'll find something to do."

He tugged her deeper into the house, and she followed without complaint. Looking around, Shilo knew what she could do.

"Cleaning," she said, stopping, "We could clean. The place kinda needs it."

Graverobber paused as well, "We could go buy cleaning supplies…"

Shilo nodded and then they headed out to do more shopping. This time it didn't take nearly as long, picking up sponges, buckets, soaps, bottles of water, and heading back to the small house to start their bit of spring cleaning.

It was so strange so see Graverobber cleaning. Pouring bottles of water and cleaning solution into a bucket, mixing it, and then submerging the sponge wrist deep into the solution, wringing it out and scrubbing down the floors and walls.

Shilo stood there watching Graverobber as he used one of his grimy, chipped nails to scrape away off a piece of grime that they didn't want to come off with just the sponge before meticulously sponging the rest clean. Shilo realized, as she should have realized before, and had, but she was realizing it again, that she knew nothing, honestly nothing, about Graverobber. He harvested and peddled Zydrate illegally for a living. What else did she know? He lived in this little house; no one else seemed to know that. And as she watched him clean, she wondered, again, what she wasn't seeing. She also thought that this was probably the cleanest his hands had been in months.

"Get your head out of the clouds Kid, cleaning was your idea," Graverobber said, not really taking his eyes off of his cleaning, and when he said it, there was no real reprimand in his voice, more like a reminder to her. He seemed to know that things like this would happen; he probably assumed that it was from her loss, the one that was still so new to her mind that she couldn't sit idly by without it starting to eat at her. Good to know he didn't really know everything.

Shilo jumped anyway, trying to pull her mind back into what she was supposed to be doing. She soaked the sponge up to her elbow and started scrubbing the floor with fervor, for a few minutes seeming as if she were trying to scrub herself clean with every inch of dirt she removed. But it didn't last, she remember that it was just a floor and that no matter how hard she scrubbed, the memories scarring her mind wouldn't wipe clean. So the fervor died down and she found herself glancing occasionally wondering what was beneath the oh-so-self-assured surface that was Graverobber.

It took well over an hour just to clean a single part of the living room before they got tired or bored and decided to take a break, both sat down on the couch, which still needed to be cleaned.

Shilo leaned back against something that wasn't part of the couch. She jumped when she realized that it was Graverobber's arm and, turning a lovely shade of pink, stammered an apology. Graverobber shrugged, grinning, seeming to really enjoy her discomfort. He watched her ramrod straight back, his eyes twinkling deviously, silent laughter painting his lips.

"Relax Kid," he said, still grinning, but he moved his arm anyway.

Shilo leaned back again, but their break didn't last long. They changed the now dirty cleaning water and got back to work.

"Let's clean a different room for now," he said, "We need a break from this one."

He led the way down the hall to the bathroom and started cleaning the sink without waiting to see if Shilo was following. With Graverobber at the sink, she went to the tub. The room was far too small for two people to be cleaning at the same time. Shilo tried to stay as small and out of the way out of the way as possible, but that was more or less impossible when she got to the end of the tub closest to the sink and toilet, and, of course, Graverobber wasn't bothering to make himself small. The two bumped into each other more than one, Shilo apologized awkwardly each time and Graverobber having a grand ol' time in her discomfort.

But the thing about small rooms was that there isn't nearly as much to clean and they were done pretty quickly. The entire room, floor and walls included, only took about an hour. They worked side by side on the house until it was time for Graverobber to be peddling. The house still wasn't that clean, but it was far better than it had been. -----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Author's Notes: Sorry guys that this chapter took forever and.... [/checks calendar] three and a half days... but there are some things that are going on that I'm still trying to get through. Bear with me while I get my writing back? Please and thank you. I really hope that you guys review lots, it'll help me through stuff and help me get my writing back.

I don't really think that this chapter is any sort of good, and I'm sorry for that. I promise that I'll get my rear back in gear and start writing things that are not flaming piles of dung and worth being proud of. And I'll try and update sooner. .;;

Sorry guys, no reader responses this time. I'll be sure to give you guys extra love next time.

Oh, and expect a timeskip of a few months in the next chapter. Just a little spoiler for you guys to ruminate over.... or not, because it doesn't tell you much.]


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

It had been a little more than three months since the Opera and Shilo was rebuilding her life. Well, she wasn't rebuilding anything; she couldn't, so she was building an entirely new life. As a grave-robber.

After three months, Shilo was still shoddy at harvesting Zydrate, but at least she didn't vomit at the smell anymore. But she couldn't keep her hands from trembling. Graverobber said that she had made a lot of progress. He had even let her start administering Zydrate to the addicts. As long as Amber Sweet wasn't lurking around. And even now that she, more or less, owned the world and could get all the official Zydrate she could ever want, apparently she would always prefer the illegal street Zydrate. But she wouldn't legalize it. This was Amber Sweet we're talking about, and that would make sense. And it would take half the fun out of it. Granted, legalizing street Zydrate would probably cause some sort of civil unrest, so, that was probably pretty smart on her behalf, though most people, at least in this town, already knew that Ms. Sweet was addicted to street Zydrate, and the knife that came with it.

Amber Sweet really didn't like Shilo. Shilo tried not to be offended, it wasn't like it Shilo liked her either, but it really wasn't Shilo's fault that Rotti had been willing to sign GeneCo over to her. And it wasn't like he really would have anyway, because Shilo would never have pulled the trigger on her own father. Not that Rotti hadn't done that for her in the end anyway, but, really, we were moving forward. But it still wasn't Shilo's fault.

Shilo didn't peddle Zydrate more than once or twice a week, and most of the trust her enough to allow her to shoot them up. So she wasn't all that practiced at that either. Some might say that she was better at harvesting than she was at peddling. Graverobber had let her keep the extractor from that first time and she wanders around with her Zydrate kit in her messenger bag slung over one shoulder and across her body. You never know when you'll come across a corpse. And she had once.

She had wandered into a boarded building to duck away from a trio of GeneCops and had found a body, fairly newly dead, that hadn't yet started to decompose, but the body was bloated and really kinda gross. Graverobber had told her never to waste an opportunity, and that was had been entirely too golden. So she had harvested it. The corpse was bloated and covered in a thick, clear, slimy… something. She had thrown up for at least five minutes before finishing the extraction. When Shilo managed to finish the extraction, she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. It made her careless and she ran out of the building without checking to see if the coast was clear. If those GeneCops had been lurking she would have been screwed. But, she got lucky, the street was deserted. Graverobber had congratulated her find, and Shilo had failed to mention her bout of carelessness.

And now Shilo was just getting back to the little cottage that she lived in with Graverobber. It was cleaner now, if only slightly, and it had taken three months to get it as clean as it was now. One of the first things that Shilo had demanded to clean was the couch and armchair. Oh, and her mattress. And they had done so, and now the furniture didn't leave a fine layer of dust on them. Shilo hadn't once seen a cockroach or rat, for which she was glad.

"Graverobber? Are you here?" she said as she wandered through the boarded door.

"Living room," she heard him respond and went to join him.

He was sitting on the couch eating a sandwich and looking the same as ever. Not that he should look any different after a mere three months. He grinned at her as she sat down on the other end of the couch and tucked her feet under herself.

"Anything interesting going on out there?" he asked.

Shilo shook her head and said, "Nothing worth mentioning. It's a quiet day, the addicts aren't even in the alley yet."

Graverobber nodded, "Sounds like we won't be peddling tonight."

Shilo relaxed back into the couch more comfortably, not peddling meant they would be doing more harvesting, and she could live with that. They just had to watch out for GeneCops, and she was getting pretty good at that. The sun was setting now, but it wouldn't be full dark for another hour, so she had time to kill. It was time for food. So she got up and went to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. They ate a lot of sandwiches, they had pretty limited electricity and most of their cooking was done in the fireplace. She made herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich, Graverobber had brought the fruit back yesterday. She brought her sandwich and two bottles of water back to the living room, handing one of the bottles to Graverobber and perched herself into the couch to eat.

Shilo saw a vial of bright blue Zydrate hanging from Graverobber's belt. She was still fighting withdrawal from whatever her father's drug was; they had never figured out what that was, so she was having to battle her withdrawal and addiction without outside aid since they were afraid that giving her something else might have adverse reactions to her. There were times that she would stare at the Zydrate that either she would collect or she would see on Graverobber's person. She remembered the first time Graverobber caught her staring at the Zydrate in their little holsters.

"If you've never tried Zydrate, don't," he said, "It's common to get addicted to Z after your first hit. That's why it's free, because they're almost guaranteed to come back for more," he told her. Maybe that was part of the reason she didn't have her own Zydrate gun. Curiosity might just kill a young grave-robber. In the past three months, four of the addicts they regularly serviced had died, probably from an overdose.

"Shilo," Graverobber said, him using her real name always got her attention real quick, "You're doing it again."

She looked away quickly, staring into the fire that was burning merrily in the grate.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this," she said.

"You're doing fine Kid, everyone goes through urges, everyone wants to know what it is that makes this stuff so irresistible, "Graverobber told her, "You're a tough kid, you're dealing with one addiction already and you don't think Zydrate will help you, so you're fighting that too."

He stood up then and beckoned to her. It was time to leave for the graveyard shift. Shilo slipped her messenger bag over her head and followed Graverobber out the door. It was still early, but already the sky was a deep inky blue-black. It was about the time when the GeneCops would be switching shifts, meaning security was pretty lax. So they snuck into the cemetery and found a new grave and dug it up. They found three bodies piled in the loose dirt, not even a coffin for these three, who might have been family or complete strangers. They were the new dead, stiff with rigor. Graverobber took one, calm and seeming almost to enjoy himself. Shilo took another, her hands still trembling as she stuck the tube into the corpse's nasal cavity and into its brain and pulled the plunger; there was no doing this quickly, the Zydrate was pretty thick and didn't always want to come through the tube into the vial. Graverobber was watching her as she removed the vial from the extractor, and she looked back; the third body was still sitting there, waiting to be harvested. That could only mean that he wanted her to do that one as well. She swallowed convulsively as she inserted the extractor tube into the last corpse. She had learned quickly to think of it as nothing but a corpse, a body… when you started thinking of them as people you started thinking of them as what they might have been in life, and you were far more likely to get sick when they became people.

Once all three of the bodies had been harvested they made their way slowly to another grave that looked as if it had been untouched. They found another two graves and five bodies to harvest before leaving the graveyard and heading back to the cottage. Graverobber had Shilo extract five out of the eight bodies they ended up harvesting. There were too many GeneCops wandering around for them to keep harvesting after that, so they went back to the cottage to relax more; it was about midnight when they got back. Shilo plopped down onto her mattress and organized the vials she had while Graverobber did the same on the couch, only, he lounged. Then again, Graverobber never sat; he lounged, so that wasn't unusual in the least.

"I still don't think it's right that I have a mattress and you have the couch," Shilo said without looking up from her kit. Graverobber grinned, this wasn't the first time she had brought it up, and he had yet to make a sexual comment about it, surprisingly enough. Sometimes it was hard not to. She mentioned again that the mattress was big enough for both of them and that she didn't mind sharing; he had spent the last three months biting his tongue when she started in on this argument. But, after three months, it gets tiring. Not to mention, Graverobber wasn't well-known for his patience, though he could be surprisingly patient when he needed to be, considering the kinds of people he dealt with on a daily basis. But…

Graverobber stood up and sprawled on the mattress around Shilo, that devious grin on his face as he trailed his fingers lightly down her arm. "Y'know Kid, if you really want me in your bed that badly, you should just say so," he said in a husky voice.

"N-n-no," she stammered, her face a very deep red, "That's not wh-what I meant at a-all."

He wrapped his fingers under her chin, "Look at me, Shilo," he said, and she did, her name getting her to look against her will almost. She just couldn't help it. She stared at him, her face still red, but her eyes didn't waver from his. His face was serious now, he grin wiped clean away. And it was close, quite close, "Is that so?"

Before Shilo could even squeak out a response, the distance was gone, not just smaller, but completely gone. It took her a second to realize he was kissing her, and then another second for the shock to set in. But she didn't pull away; she might not have had the chance to, because the kiss ended quickly, chaste as he pulled away. Shilo stared at him through wide eyes. Graverobber's grin was back.

"Wh-what?" she stammered, completely confused about what had just happened.

Graverobber was still grinning at her, seeming amused yet somehow serious about what was going on, "Confused Kid?"

"Yes," she said, "what about Amber Sweet?"

Graverobber made a face, almost disgusted, "What about her?"

"Don't you love her? I mean… You treat her like a goddess… that look… like total devotion…"

"It's what she wants, you always give the customer what they want," he told her with as much of a shrug as he could give holding himself up on one arm the way he was.

Shilo fell back onto the mattress staring at the ceiling, "I don't get you, Graverobber," she told the ceiling.

Graverobber's face, grin and all, appeared above her, "No one does," he said before lowering himself in a push up to kiss her again. "That offer still open?" he asked, suddenly no longer above her, and reappeared next to her, laying on his side his grin somewhat more serious than it had been.

"I don't get it, I don't get it," she chanted to herself for about a minute before she nodded and told him that the offer was still open and rolling onto her side, not facing him. She heard what sounded like a half suppressed chuckle from behind her. She was surprised he bothered to even try to hide it.

Amber Sweet was sitting at her desk staring at a transparent piece of paper printed with information. Someone had defaulted on their payments and it was time to get that pair of ear canals returned to GeneCo. She called in a Repoman and relayed all of the necessary information, which meant that she handed him the sheet of paper and waved him away with the usual order of getting back GeneCo's property. With the Repoman gone, Amber was left to dwell on the thoughts that they always seemed to return to. Shilo Wallace.

She turned in her chair to face the two waiting Henchwomen standing silent and immobile as statues behind her. "I want Shilo Wallace dead," she told them. And without a movement to show that they understood, both walked out of the office.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Two weeks. The time seemed to have moved wrong, but Shilo wasn't sure if more time should have passed, or less, but the time that had passed didn't really seem right. Since that one strange and confusing night a couple of weeks ago, Shilo and Graverobber had been sharing the mattress, and she would sometimes wake up with his arm around her waist. But that was only when she woke up before he did. Though, considering her continued issues with withdrawal and insomnia, it wasn't all-together that unusual for her to wake up while he slept. She noticed that the nightmares weren't as horrible now that she wasn't alone while she tried to sleep. She wasn't telling him that, of course. She was still confused, still trying to figure out what it all meant, if it meant anything at all.

Yesterday, something had happened, and it wasn't a good happening. Graverobber had some back to the little house with bad news. Really bad news.

"Shilo," he had said when he came through the door. One sharp, abrupt word that got her attention in an instant. Her name in that tone had a power to get her attention, probably more than it would for most people, since she wasn't used to him using her real name. But he had, and there must have been a reason she would quickly learn.

"I'm in the living room," she called back and peered over the top of the couch waiting for him to come through the door.

"There's bad news, Kid," he said, not even all the way through the door when he started speaking. "Amber Sweet's send her goons after you."

Shilo stared at him for a moment processing the information, "You mean the buff guys that don't wear shirts?" she asked, still staring at him over the couch.

She saw the quick grin fade into a somber expression, "Those guys are dead. Rotti's two chicks took over the job, and something tells me the gun happy fiends are a lot more efficient than those two were."

She paled, her brief experience with Rotti Largo's bodyguards had ended with her being kidnapped, manhandled, and gassed, not to mention that they had tased her father. More than once. Mustn't forget that one.

"So…. What? Are they going to be… kidnapping me or something?" she asked. She didn't believe it for an instant, but she was hopeful that a miracle would happen.

Graverobber shook his head unhappily, "Kid, she ordered them to kill you."

Shilo's heart sank; it wasn't her fault that Rotti had put her name on the will, a will that had never been signed. A will that Graverobber had somehow managed to get his hands on and probably had stashed somewhere, as long he hadn't used it for kindling yet.

"Why me," she groaned, falling heavily against the back of the couch. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was pleased with the lack of dust clouding around her face, "I didn't want it anyway."

"You know that, I know that, hell, even Amber knows that," Graverobber said, heading for the door, "but the truth of the matter is: You're a threat. Amber holds grudges. And, for some unknown reason, Rotti chose you over his own three children as his heir."

With that, Graverobber slipped out of the room and the house. He didn't exactly want to leave Shilo alone right now, but he preferred that over someone recognizing her and he had things to take care of.

He had thought that this would happen eventually. He wasn't sure if he thought that this was sooner than expected or if it was later, but he knew that it would happen. There was a reason that Graverobber didn't call her by name, especially in public, and it wasn't simply to raise her hackles or the familiarity of it.

Shilo groaned, now there were people out to kill her. It wasn't bad enough that because of Amber Sweet's father her own was dead; she didn't even know where his body was, she told herself that it was in the family tomb, that she could visit them both if she ever got the chance; she knew she was deluding herself and that he had probably been tossed in a ditch, already occupied by four other corpses. Granted, her mother's corpse wasn't even in that tomb, so it didn't really matter in the long run anyway. She could sort of trace her father drugging her and isolating her from the world on Rotti killing her mother, which was just another thing to add to the list of things that Rotti had done to ruin her life. And now Amber Sweet wanted to kill her for something that Rotti Largo had done. Really, she just didn't see how that made any sense. And she was scared; those women had already found and kidnapped her once, gassing her to do it. She swore they weren't people, more like robots. Gun happy robots.

She wondered how thoroughly they were searching, how long it would take before they raided this house. They would see that it was inhabited, and they would watch the place. Suddenly, she wasn't sure if she should miss the dust, or be glad it wasn't thick enough to leave footprints. Though, they would know that someone had been there either way, but that could be any homeless person holing up in this place. One thing was certain though: she couldn't go home, she couldn't visit her mother's tomb. They would search there first, they would watch those places. She started shaking. She was afraid, and, deeper than the fear, she was angry. Angry at Rotti because it was his fault, and angry at Amber Sweet because she simply wouldn't let go. It wasn't enough for her that she had everything.

She stood at a boarded window, staring through a space in the boards conveniently at eye level; there was another at Graverobber's height, but that one had been strategically placed. Her mind told her that she could hear people talking outside, female voices and boots walking across the porch. But it wasn't really happening; she knew her mind was playing tricks on her. She knew, and she couldn't make it stop. She stood in the window, trembling and hugging herself.

Graverobber, whose boots as he came back to the house were the footsteps Shilo heard, came up behind her, hugging her tightly. She jumped and struggled to get free, and he held her still, murmuring into her hair that everything would work out fine, even though he couldn't be sure of that. He held her like that, murmuring, for almost twenty minutes before the color returned to her face and the tremors stopped and she could finally relax.

The tears hadn't stopped by the time Graverobber let her go and turned her to face him. She tried to hide her tear washed face from him until he used his fingers to lift her chin until she looked at him; she didn't fight him.

"I d-don't want to die," she admitted, voice cracking as she fought against breaking down again. It was good to hear, considering the state she had been in when he had found her after the Opera.

"You'll be fine, we'll find a way to get through this," he told her, wiping the moisture from her face, which left a smear of grime on her face from his unclean finger. He sounded so reassuring for a man hoping for a miracle.

"We know the whole story," Adrien said to her partner as the two waited in an alley across from the Wallace home. It was the most likely place for the young woman to be: she had no one to count on now that her family was all dead. She was completely alone in the world, with no knowledge of how to survive.

"So?" Sierie responded, not taking her eyes off the building. Both guns were holstered, but her hand didn't seem to like that and never strayed too far from them.

"We both know it was all Mr. Largo's fault," Adrien pressed, "the girl didn't want anything to do with GeneCo, we were there. Why should we kill her?"

Sierie's eyes flickered to her behind her dark glasses, "we'd be doing her a favor; she's probably whoring herself to survive by now," she said, her voice cold, "besides, we protect the Head of GeneCo, and that's Amber Sweet. She wants Shilo Wallace dead, we do it. No questions asked."

"No questions asked," Adrien sighed, defeated. And they stalked the Wallace House.

The truth doesn't matter. The orders do.

The middle of the night and Shilo wasn't sleeping. She was alone in the house, Graverobber gone to peddle Zydrate or harvest it, she wasn't sure which. There was no light, and the fire was stoked just in case people wandered by. Luckily it was comfortable enough that she didn't need the fire to keep warm. There were other homeless people in this city, seemed sometimes that there were more people without homes than with them, so Shilo had convinced herself that even if the Henchwomen raided this place, it might be any poor, probably addicted person living there. Even with her in it. Her hair was unrecognizably short, if she didn't wear a wig. And Graverobber had procured her another wig, a shoulder length blonde wave with bangs just long enough to cover her significantly darker eyebrows. He had also procured color contacts for her, and taught her what they were and how to use them. All things considered, she didn't think she had to worry about being recognized. Or, at least, that's how she convinced herself. But she still wasn't sleeping alone in the house.

She didn't like being alone, in the dark, with nothing but the light of her watch to see by. So she was hiding curled in a corner of the couch. She didn't want to get up, paranoia said that if she was going to move, she was going to attract attention to herself and to the little cottage she was hiding in, that was slowly becoming her home. She was pretty sure that it was Graverobber's home already. Would she be allowed to have this become her home, or would Graverobber cast her out after so long?

The idea of being cast out terrified her even more, so she shoved it aside and continued her huddling, waiting for Graverobber to come back home. Yes, home. It was about time she admitted it to herself. It was home. Was it the cottage that was her home, or was it the person that she associated with the cottage that was home? That was a dangerous question, because she was afraid she knew the already knew the answer.

She yawned; she was tired, and she was too scared to sleep while there were people out there trying to kill her and Graverobber wasn't there. Not that that was much safer than being alone. But she felt safer when he was there. So she waited for his return.

He was done peddling Zydrate for the night, he had decided it was too dangerous to try and harvest. He had seen the Henchwomen lurking in an alley. He, obviously, had turned down another alley and promptly disappeared. It was the house; he assumed they were watching the house for activity. He was going to avoid them anyway, until they cornered him for his next payment. Whoever could know that fingerprints were so expensive? They would be hunting him down soon, as long as Amber Sweet didn't make Shilo their only priority, and when they found him, he would be sure to be found alone, like every other month, and they would be none the wiser to his association with Shilo Wallace, and she would be safe.

Hopefully, she would stay safe, no matter what happened.

He went back to the cottage, confident that the Henchwomen were safely tucked away into their alleyway, not about to move until they were certain Shilo didn't live there. Graverobber felt bad if there was someone living in that house. They were probably dragged off to the alley for be questioned and killed.

He slipped inside, his boots thumping loudly on the wooden floor and announcing his presence to anyone inside, which had best only be Shilo, and she had best still be there when he walked into the living room.

"Kid? You awake?" he asked, pausing in the doorway to the dark room to let his eyes adjust to the near complete lack of light in the room.

"Yeah," she mumbled, sounding exhausted and like she had been almost asleep.

"Did I wake you?" he asked, pinpointing where her voice was and walking towards the couch by the fireplace.

"No," she said miserably, letting her head rest heavily on her arm.

Graverobber found her arm, after a fumbled attempt the first time he went for it, and squeezed it reassuringly, "let's go to bed, Shilo."

She let him help her up and in the darkness they found their way to the mattress and lay down, almost tripping on the edge when they finally found it. Graverobber wrapped himself around Shilo and rested her head in his chest. Shilo closed her eyes and was asleep within five minutes. Graverobber was up half an hour longer, rubbing soothing circles in her back and thinking up a plan that might be able to help them both before he was able to fall asleep himself.

The next morning, Shilo woke up with the worst cramp ever. She struggled out of Graverobber's arms, waking him along the way as she almost ran to the bathroom. That time of the month that she really hated being female.

"What's wrong, Kid?" he asked when he finally saw her come back to the living room. She muttered some things under her breath, not meeting his eyes, and the only thing he understood was of it was the word female. It clicked though, and Graverobber nodded.

"What are we doing today?" she asked, plopping herself down on the couch with her hands hung limp between her knees.

"We're going to go shopping," he said calmly, bending over the back of the couch.

"Shopping?"

"You need more clothes," he told her, grinning at the increasingly perplexed look he could see over her shoulder. Confusing her never ceased to amuse him, "if you're going to have a disguise, you can't wander around in these clothes, now can you?"

"No… I suppose you're right, someone might recognize me through my clothes," she agreed and stood up, ready to go back to the thrift store they usually went to when they needed something.

Graverobber steered her directly to the skirts when they got there, "think addict," he told her and walked away.

Shilo stared blankly at the tacks of skirts and tight pants and see-through shirts made of mesh and fishnet. She knew how they dressed. Why was she being told to look for that?

She sighed, she trusted Graverobber, deviant behavior and all, so she started looking for clothing in her size, and even too small, but just be a little.

She found some things, but it was not something she ever wanted to be seen wearing, but Graverobber seemed pleased with her findings of a pair of very short jean shorts, that were torn in places that didn't show inappropriate things and a form fitting tank top with a faded white cross. She grabbed a fishnet shirt, as well as fishnet thigh high tights and two more pairs of thigh highs, one striped and the other solid; turns out the solid pair was actually knee high. Fishnets and tights made everything look more like a Z addict would throw it together, especially if it didn't match. She also grabbed a pair of platform boots that laced up to her mid-thigh with a buckle over the front of the ankle.

Graverobber paid for the new outfit and the cashier said something to Graverobber that Shilo didn't understand, "they've been around," Graverobber merely nodded at the cryptic message and steered Shilo out of the store and dragged her down the nearest alley, pulling her deep enough that it wasn't immediately apparent that there were people there. He did a quick sweep to make sure they were the only people there and pushed Shilo against the wall.

"Change your clothes, Kid," he said, pinning her to the wall with his hips.

"What're you doing?" she asked, trying to pull away but only managing to bruise her back.

"People aren't going to question a hook up in an alley. They might wonder about someone changing clothes and come investigate," Graverobber muttered, "hurry up and change."

Not that that wasn't awkward, and embarrassing, and uncomfortable, but Graverobber didn't help by occasionally rubbing or thrusting against her… 'for good measure' of course. Not awkward in the least to be changing her clothes as Graverobber made a show. She was pretty sure he was doing it more to torment her than anything else, and she was turning a pretty interesting shade of pink in the dim light of the alley.

He leaned in against her, burying his face in her neck to be able to mutter in her ear, "you're not making this any easier, Kid."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, buttoning the shorts, which she had just realized had three buttons and the shortest zipper ever.

In response, he grabbed her hips and pressed her even more firmly against himself and raised his eyebrow in a sardonic expression.

"Oh," was her squeaked response. Graverobber grinned at the response and took half a step back so that she could shimmy into the fishnet shirt and tank top.

He handed her a wig; this one a short pixie cut in an exotic shade of grey with green streaks in the bangs. Shilo didn't question where he kept getting the new wigs.

He leaned against the wall while Shilo put her socks and boots on, "we're going to be telling people that you're my new lay. That way, I get to keep you close to me, and no one knows who you are."

Shilo stared up at him from over her shoulder in disbelief, "your new lay?" she repeated as if she thought she had misheard.

"It's the best thing I can come up with Kid, and the one that people are most likely to believe," he said, heaving out a sigh.

He grabbed her by the forearm when she stood up, rumpled the hair on the wig slightly, and dragged her out of the alley before Shilo could protest that being a Z addict or Graverobber's new lay.

"Where are we going?" she asked, trying to walk as if she knew the answer to that question.

"To showcase you," Graverobber said, "I want people to see you and me together so rumors start. Hopefully it gets to the Henchchicks and they leave us alone."

Shilo nodded. That was the only part of this entire plan and disguise scheme that made any sense at all to her. It didn't mean that she wanted to play the part. Not this part, not this way. Granted, since it might possibly be a matter of life or death, she could pretend to be some sort of drug addicted whore. As long as she didn't become either of those things. Which she didn't intend to do.

"So, we're going to the alley?" Shilo asked.

"Yes," Graverobber responded tersely, "Do me a favor, I know you hate the idea, but act addicted. Act like they do, fawn, do whatever, just play the part."

It took Shilo a moment of contemplative silence, but in the end, she agreed.

"She's not here," Sierie said. They had found and unkempt middle-aged man using the Wallace House as their own. They had taken him down their alley and asked him a plethora of questions that he seemed far more willing to answer after the first broken wrist. None of his answers gave him useful information.

The only useful thing the man said was, "no one's been in this house since the Genetic Opera. Nathan Wallace was killed on the stage and his daughter never came home. She probably killed herself than deal with that shit, I know I would have."

It made sense, but they would have to find the body to be sure. Her body wasn't in the ditch where they dumped the man's.

"The Graverobber helped her escape when we had her in Sanitarium Square, he might know something," Sierie went on.

"We have to find him for his payment anyway, we can question him about it then," Adrien commented from where she was leaning against the wall.

Sierie nodded, "we'll start looking for him tonight."

"We started looking for him last week," Adrien mentioned, "so far we haven't found hide nor hair of him."

Author's Notes:

Again…. I'm sorry that this update took so long. I finished the semester from hell, and have graduated from the school I was in since the last time I updated. Maybe now I'll have more time to write, but I'm not sure about that. I want to thank everyone that's been reading and waiting for so long, and for the reader's that haven't abandoned hope that I wouldn't update again. I know it's a pain to wait for me to update for so long.

This chapter gets racy in places, but I think it's still worthy of keeping its Teen rating, if you disagree, tell me and I'll consider changing it. It's still up in the air whether I'll be changing the rating or not. I hope you all like the new chapter, and I hope it's not a disappointment for you.

And I want to thank everyone who favorited and especially the people that commented my story, it's because of you I continue to write this story.

Disclaimer: It's been a while since I had to admit to myself that I didn't own Repo! The Genetic Opera, or any of the characters…. Or any of the actors and actresses that portray said characters. What I do own is the plot to this puppy and a bunch of Repo! Paraphernalia, but that doesn't count in the least. Sad, I know.


	11. Chapter 10

Two days. It had already been two days of her playing the role of Graverobber's favored whore. She didn't want to admit how simple it seemed or how easy it was to play the part. They got around her being shot up with Zydrate by telling people that her Z was given in a more private setting. That got people talking, which was technically what they wanted, but Shilo still didn't like playing this part. There was so much that could go wrong. She swallowed it; no one knew it was her, so it wouldn't sully anyone's opinion of her. Not that they had any good opinions of her in the first place. One of the addicts had asked where she was yesterday, granted, they had called her a bratty child, but they had asked about her. Graverobber's answer was painfully nonchalant as he replied that he had grown tired of playing children's games. Which didn't answer anyone's question, but the addicts were too far gone by that point to realize the difference, and they took from the vague response what they wanted to hear from it.

Graverobber tugged her out of the alley after half an hour showboating and administering Zydrate to fawning addicts, some making it more obvious that they would like a private session or two, tossing jealous glances at Shilo occasionally. The grin he left with told the others that he was about to get personal with his client, and that brought Shilo a little more negative attention than she would have liked, but she cling to him, grinning lasciviously all the way out of the alley.

The grin faded somewhat once they were out of the alley, but they weren't far enough away to be able to drop the charade completely. One thing Shilo was learning about wigs was that if they were of poor quality, like this grey and green one, they itched and she wanted nothing more than to take the thing off and never put it back on. But she couldn't do that until they were back at the cottage.

Graverobber turned them into another alley that acted both as cover and as a shortcut back to where they lived. They stopped short, Graverobber immediately tense. Shilo looked up, terrified of whatever it was that could make Graverobber tense up so quickly, and even worse when she saw what was actually standing there. But, terror wasn't unusual if you walked into an alley and almost straight into the barrel of a gun.

"Looks like this one's occupied," Shilo said, trying to sound something, anything, that wasn't pure terror. She sounded breathy, and that could work, even though it was the sound of fear as she stood there, face to shotgun, with the two women that were hunting her.

Graverobber held her close by the waist, looking possessive, but Shilo just found it soothing.

"Stay here," he told her as he stepped away, his touch lingering as he approached the Henchwomen. He took out three vials of Zydrate and handed it to them without a word.

He started to back away, a cocky grin in place, but Sierie brought out her handgun and sighted it between his eyes. He didn't look overly surprised, but he stopped moving and he could hear Shilo gasp behind him and cover her mouth with her hands, nails painted to hide any grave dirt that might have gotten stuck thoroughly enough that they didn't want to come clean. Sierie gestured him to the wall, he did what she wanted and watched her approach him with wary eyes. She thrust the gun under his chin.

"Hey, I paid you, what's the deal? You want next month's payment too?" he asked, sounding both incredulous and cocky, not particularly bothered by the gun in his chin.

"Where is Shilo Wallace?" she demanded, pressing the gun more firmly into him.

"Who?" Graverobber asked, raising an eyebrow as if the name were unfamiliar to him, his voice sounding genuinely confused, as if he had no idea who they might be talking about.

"You helped her escape Sanitarium Square the day of the Opera, we saw you weaving through people with her," Adrien supplied.

"That kid? Never saw her again after that," Graverobber said dismissively, "most people say she killed herself after the Opera. Haven't found the body to harvest it though, so I think she may have just left the city."

Sierie narrowed her eyes behind the sunglasses, not believing a word of what the Graverobber was trying to sell her. There was nothing she could do about it though, "if there's a corpse to be found in this city, you'll find it," she told him.

"Like I said, I think that she just left the city. What's she got here that would make her stay? Not a family, that's for sure," Graverobber shrugged, stepping away, "now, if you don't mind, I have plans."

Graverobber grabbed Shilo around the shoulders, grinning deviously at the Henchwomen.

"Don't talk yet," he muttered under his breath after swinging them around to leave the alley again.

"What was that?" was the best thing Shilo could come up with that would sound like something Graverobber's pet whore would come up with.

"Payment," he said shortly.

"Payment for what?"

"My fingerprints."

Fingerprints? Surgery… Graverobber owed GeneCo a debt for fingerprints. And he was paying them off in illegal Zydrate. Shilo's mind started spinning out of control. They still hunted him for harvesting the Zydrate that he paid them in. Maybe that was how Amber was getting her fix now. She was in the alley less and less often now.

But what if… what if they offered him freedom from his debt in exchange for her, what would he do? What would he do?

When they got back to the cottage, the first thing Shilo did was pull off the wig and toss it on a rack like a coat. Next she took off her shoes and curled up in the corner of the couch looking slightly glassy eyed.

Graverobber pulled her into his arms and lay down on the other side of the couch.

"They have no idea," he reassured her, stroking her hair soothingly.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked in a small voice, not looking at him, "It's like I don't even know you."

"Well, you don't really know me, you only know the last few months of who I am and who I might be becoming," he started off with, "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare you. Besides, I'd rather people not know that I'm in debt to GeneCo and paying them in an illegal substance, and I'm sure that they'd rather keep it that way too," the Cheshire grin was there again.

"But… what if they clear your debt if you can tell them something that will help them find me?" she asked.

Graverobber lifted her chin to look at him, "I know nothing about you; I think you've either left the city or I haven't found your body to harvest yet. And by this point, if I do find it, it wouldn't be recognizable, left out to the elements, or wherever it might have been dumped," he told her, no trace of a grin on his unusually serious face.

Shilo managed a weak smile and lay her head back on his chest. He kept petting her hair, hoping that the Henchwomen would leave them alone. At least until next month. And hopefully next time Shilo wouldn't be so terrifyingly close.

"What about the woman?" Sierie asked Adrien, trusting that the other woman had been paying attention to the general area than she had been while questioning the Graverobber.

"Looked like one of the usual addicted whores that's hanging off of him ready to make a payment," Adrien replied with a slight shrug, "She didn't do anything to make me think she would be anything else."

"I want to watch them," Sierie said.

"Of course you do," Adrien said, "I just don't think that there's anything to find there. You saw the look on his face. He doesn't know."

Sierie shot her a glare that could wither roses. Adrien simply shrugged it off, used to her more abrasive counterpart.

"He knows something," Sierie said stubbornly.

"Sier, he can't possibly know everything, and sometimes it just feels like you think of him as a one stop shop for all of our problems," Adrien claimed nonchalantly. Adrien knew that her nonchalance would bug Sierie, but Adrien was against the assignment to begin with and didn't want to find the poor girl.

"I say we get some poor sod to play witness. Have him tell Miss Sweet they saw the Wallace girl leaving the city. Claim she hasn't been seen yet," it seemed like a decently solid plan in Adrien's mind at least.

Sierie did not share the sentiment. Next thing Adrien knew, there was a pistol in her face.

"No, we aren't going against GeneCo," Sierie vehemently claimed.

"We'd be going against Miss Sweet, not GeneCo. Now get the gun out of my face."

"Miss Sweet is GeneCo now. You'd do well to remember that," Sierie lowered her gun, but the anger was still there.

Sierie had more to lose. Sierie's entire family was indebted to GeneCo, so Sierie had sold her soul to pay the debt. Adrien only had to worry about her brother. So Adrien wasn't as worried about going against the will of Miss Sweet. She was still devoted to GeneCo. But Adrien didn't like how Amber Sweet worked things. Adrien wholly believed that it was wrong to hunt Shilo Wallace without provocation.

They were lying on the mattress. It was late at night, perfect for harvesting Zydrate, but Graverobber had decided against it after the day they'd had.

Graverobber's arm was around Shilo's waist, hugging her to him. Neither was sleeping, but both were pretending not to notice. They took the peaceful, quiet time to think, simply let their minds wander at their own pleasure.

Shilo was milling about the day and what had happened. She had come face to face with the Henchwomen today, her worst nightmare had pretty much come true and she had lived through it. Graverobber had been the one facing the barrel of the gun, and that was a thought that Shilo found more disturbing than she would have thought. Not that Shilo valued his life over hers, but so many things could have gone wrong because he had stood there and allowed a gun be shoved into his throat to keep her safe. And Graverobber hadn't betrayed her. She found herself realizing that being betrayed wasn't even the scariest scenario. Losing Graverobber was. For more reasons than she could wrap her exhausted mind around. But what would she do without him? She hoped that it never came to that.

Behind her, Graverobber was trying to let the day go. It was his way to live life in the moment, and he was usually pretty good at living life one breath at a time, but he couldn't get his memory to let go of the look on Shilo's face when she learned that he paid GeneCo monthly, which meant that he saw the Henchwomen monthly. She felt betrayed; he could see it in her eyes, and he could understand it. Graverobber wasn't really the hopeless romantic type that would claim to die to save another person, but he would do everything he could to keep her safe. He knew that, he just didn't think that Shilo did.

Eventually, he fell asleep with his mind a frothing sea of chaos.

A/N:

I finally got around to another chapter. I hope that you're still here and reading and enjoying, even though I'm so slow to update most of the time, and I apologize for that. Really I do. I'm glad for all of the reviews that I get, they're really the only reason I keep going half the time. I enjoy this story so much, the first one in a very long time, and this one has the longest run that's every actually made it to be read by others.

I apologize that this chapter is so short though. Also, rating change pending. We'll see what happens in the next chapter. This chapter is safe enough though.

Anyway, I should probably do another disclaimer, since it's been a while:

I do not own Repo! The Genetic Opera, nor do I own any of the characters or the original plot. I own this plot, and some memorabilia, and a lot of awesome Repo! related memories, but that's about it.

Now that that's done. Let's see if I can break a personal record of late and see how soon I can get another chapter up.

As always, read and review~


	12. Chapter 11

"Can you hear that?" she whispered, even she could hear the terror in her voice. She was huddled in the pitch darkness of a closet, straining to hear any sound that wasn't her own frantic breathing and the racing heartbeat that belonged to the Graverobber, holding her closely enough that her ear was pressed against his chest.

There. That was definitely the sound of steady footsteps on the floorboards. Careful footsteps, but footsteps that were sure of themselves, lacking fear or nervousness. She clung more tightly to Graverobber, who tightened his grip on her shoulder. The footsteps stopped dangerously close to their hiding place.

She held her breath; if she didn't breathe, they wouldn't open the door and find them amongst the clothes, huddled together like frightened animals before the predator pounced.

The doorknob rattled; Shilo started breathing again, short, ragged gasps that didn't provide nearly enough to her hungry lungs and made her feel faint. The door swung open with a soft creak, her vision was filled with the barrel of a shotgun. But the gun wasn't pointed at her, not yet at least.

Graverobber tightened his hold on her as the trigger was pulled and the bullet blasted into his face, essentially beheading him. His blood was everywhere; it caked in a thick, hot, rapidly congealing mess on the left side of her face and down her shoulders and shirt. His body jerked with the impact, taking Shilo with it and she hit her head against the back wall.

She was trembling so badly it was easily visible to her killers. Her tears mingled swiftly with the blood on her cheeks , and the cold sweat soaking any dry piece of clothing that was still on her within moments. She couldn't breathe, despite the ragged gasps that came with hyperventilation. But, despite all of this, she was mostly silent, sheer terror and a grim knowledge of what was coming muting her.

She was hyper-aware. She could hear the steady dripping of blood onto the floor from the coats she huddled in and the occasional flop of something thicker. She didn't want to look over at what was left of the Graverobber, his arm now slack around her, but a morbid curiosity, and frantic denial overtook her, and she turned her head, mouth open in a horrified shriek that was stolen from her throat before it could even come into being.

The entire top of his head was gone, only a very small part of his brain was still there, framed by his bottom jaw. The bottom jaw was broken, shattered, mangled, unrecognizable. The body was slumped against her, and a twitch, probably from shock, caused the body to slump sideways, the mangled pieces touching her cheek. Something touched her, something too thick, too spongy, and wet.

She couldn't help it; she leaned forward and was furiously sick. She expelled the contents of her stomach until there was nothing but thick, rancid-smelling white bile pooled in front of her and soaking her toes. Graverobber's still-warm corpse fell backward with a heavy thunk. There was an audible difference between the fall of a living body from the fall that of a dead one. She vomited once more the thick white bile from her system; the bile was starting to become thicker, darker, soiling the heeled leather boots of the pair of murders, who didn't even twitch. And then, finally, still trying to spit the hotly sour taste of stomach acid from her mouth, looked up at her killers.

Less than a minute had passed. Shilo closed her eyes, trembling violently, willing herself not to feel the burning metal against her chest. The Henchwomen were as cold as the barrel of the gun was hot.

And she pulled the trigger.

Her own screams woke her. Her violent thrashing had her entire body in a fire of overexerted muscles. And an urgent, low, masculine voice that seemed afraid to startle her.

"Kid! Kid! Wake up Shilo, it's just a dream."

Just a dream. He was alive. Just a dream. Both of them, still alive.

"But it felt so real," she whispered, vocal chords only able to produce a croak.

Graverobber cradled her, rocking back and forth to soothe the trembling and calm her rapid breathing and explosive heartbeat, all the while murmuring that it was just a dream. This time.

"I don't want to be afraid anymore," she murmured after a long while. Graverobber didn't say anything, just cradled her head against his chest and petted her sweat soaked hair.

Neither of them slept for the rest of the night and the light of dawn silently crept into their unwilling eyes. The intrusion was a sweet salvation for Shilo. She had stopped shaking some time ago, no more than two hours, and now, with the light, she could see that they really were alone in the cottage.

When she sat up, Graverobber followed suit. Shilo went to take a bath, filling the tub and a bucket with steaming hot water. She washed her hair in the bucket before stripping and climbing into the tub, lips pursed to avoid ingesting the unhealthy water. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and fully submerged in the water for nearly a full minute before resurfacing.

Graverobber was standing in the doorway when she opened her eyes. She gasped, just high enough above the water's surface that she didn't inhale it, and covered herself as best she could with her hands and the free-floating washcloth. What she did wanted to do was hide her face, now bright red with embarrassment.

Graverobber chuckled and she glared at him as fiercely as she could muster. Never had he interrupted her bath before.

"What do you want?" she demanded in a stammer.

"Just to make sure you're alright, Kid. Many suicides happen during bath time, and I worry about you. Any death you give yourself, it would be far worse than anything the Henchwomen could do to you," he replied, closing the door and Shilo could hear the footfalls of his heavy boots down the hall.

Yes, she had thought about suicide. But she had never even considered to actually go through with it! But he could tell, and he had come to check on her, just in case.

"He's lying!" came the shriek of GeneCo's new owner as Adrien and Sierie stood in front of her, giving their latest report involving having questioned the Graverobber about the whereabouts of Shilo Wallace. Her reaction had been less than pleasant.

"We can only tell you what the Graverobber told us, Ms. Sweet," Adrien stated evenly. She was annoyed at Amber Sweet's outburst, but kept her face safely neutral. She and Sierie both knew that this meant that they would have to go and hunt down the elusive Graverobber again and question him more thoroughly.

"Well he's lying. Graverobber had Shilo Wallace with him when he was administering Zydrate to the ZSN a few days after the Opera. I saw her myself," Amber said, adamant about the truth of her memory.

"We'll have to go and remind him, then," Sierie said, fingers trailing lightly at the butt of the pistol safely tucked away in its holster at her thigh.

"This time, make sure he remembers correctly," Ms. Sweet told them smugly.

The Henchwomen took that as a dismissal and turned to leave, moving in the perfect synchrony one can only obtain through years of practice.

"You don't want to do this," Sierie noted once they were out of the building and once again on the hunt for Shilo Wallace.

"Of course I don't, and you already know I think Ms. Sweet's hunt is ridiculous. We're supposed to protect her from things that would harm her, not from a person that was unwillingly tossed into the fray that Mr. Largo created," Adrien said, her voice was kept even with difficulty, though she very nearly had an outburst as Amber had.

"It's beginning to wear on me, as well," Sierie admitted, surprising the both of them before she hastily added, "But that doesn't mean that we're going to give up. We're going to find the Graverobber, and we're going to get the truth out of him about Shilo Wallace."

Adrien's heart sank, she had begun to hope that, with that comment Sierie would begin to… to what? Adrien didn't even know. All she knew was that she didn't want to hunt down and kill Shilo Wallace. She was certain the girl was alive, and she was certain the Graverobber had something to do with it. And she would rather keep it that way. If only Sierie was willing to go against GeneCo. And risk her own life and the lives of her entire family in doing so. Right; not for someone she didn't know.

Adrien sighed, "Let's go then."

A/N:

Wow... for such a long wait, this post is really short, and really... well, I'm not happy with it, let's just say that. I'm really sorry about the wait, this chapter has been 'done' for a while, but I didn't like it so much that I didn't want to post it without something... more. In the end, that didn't happen, so here we are. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Also, because of this chapter, I'm increasing the rating to Mature, and if you can't figure out why, well, that's just silly.

Hopefully you'll read and review, and I'll hopefully not take so long next time.

As we all know, I do not own REPO! The Genetic Opera, though, if one of the owners did read this story, it would make my life, especially if they liked it. A girl can dream, right?


	13. Chapter 12

"We both know this is wrong," Adrien stated, probably for the hundredth time in the last hour, not to mention all of the hours that had come before this one. Perhaps repetition would drive her point home. Maybe she just needed to hear it once more before Sierie finally understood. Except that Sierie already understood her partner, and even agreed. The only problem was that Sierie didn't consider the life of a stranger more important than the lives of her family.

"I know it's wrong just as well as you do, but I don't see any way around it," she said calmly.

"Well, what if…" Adrien didn't continue because she didn't know where she could go with the rest of that statement. What could they do, if Sierie was willing to help her? She was at a loss. She didn't want to kill a teenager for something she had no control over.

"I'm not going to go through with this. I'm going to figure something out. I just don't know what, or how, yet," Adrien said quietly, more to herself than to her partner.

"Well, if you figure something out… let me know. I'm not making any promises, but I won't rat you out," Sierie said blandly.

Adrien conceded the small victory she had finally won. But she had no idea what she would do with it, or where it would take her.

"I didn't kill myself," Shilo announced when she walked back into the living room, her short dark hair soaked and dripping onto her shoulders and down her back, making the fabric cling to her moist skin.

Graverobber chuckled, he couldn't help it when she so clearly stated the obvious, "I figured as much when you walked into the living room instead of floated."

Shilo narrowed her eyes in a glare but stuck her tongue out at him to show that she saw the humor. She walked over to the old couch and flopped down next to the Graverobber. He wrapped a casual arm around her shoulders and she snuggled into him, laying an ear over his heart, content with the audible proof that his heart was still beating. Her left hand joined her head splayed on his chest, resting her cheek on her fingers. Graverobber adjusted himself so that his arm was around her waist, fingers travelling idly up and down her side.

The next thing Shilo and Graverobber knew, the sun had set and the moon was rising amidst the haze of the dank city.

"Well, there're things to do, Zydrate to harvest, addicts to… visit. Life keeps moving, even if someone's looking to end it," Graverobber said, hauling himself to his feet with a solid thunk of his boots.

Shilo sighed because she knew it was true. She couldn't hide just because she was terrified that the Henchwomen would finer her if she left the cottage. That wasn't any way to live. Granted, living with the knowledge that someone wanted her dead wasn't the best way to live either. Neither was particularly healthy.

"Let me go get dressed," she said, rolling off the couch. She landed on the floor and realized that it needed to be swept again. She pulled herself up and, grabbing her graverobbing gear along the wy, went to change in the bathroom.

"Don't wear a wig tonight, Kid," Graverobber told her from the other side of the bathroom door.

Shilo looked at her hair in the mirror. It was growing, but it was doing so painfully slowly. Now it was about the length of a pixie cut, the ends brushed at the nape of her neck and just about her eyes. She ran a hand under the faucet and tousled her hair with it until it looked windswept, or something that wasn't completely bland. Graverobber was right; she didn't look like the Shilo that people knew, the one that people would be looking for. There couldn't be that many people that knew that her long black hair had been a wig; there weren't enough people that knew she existed long enough to learn she wore a wig. She pulled a face into the mirror before pulling open the bathroom door and walking right into Graverobber, who was still standing right there.

"Shouldn't you have walked away after telling me not to wear a wig?" she asked him, looking up at him as he didn't even try to suppress a chuckle.

"If you had been paying attention, you'd know I hadn't walked away," he told her, Cheshire grin in place. Shilo glanced down at his heavy boots and puffed out a gust of breath, "That's what I thought."

She stuck her tongue out at him again. Then they were out of the cottage, slipping from shadow to shadow towards the nearest cemetery in search of freshly turned earth and the rancid stench of rot and decay.

They slipped into the graveyard between shifts unnoticed and lurked by larger tombstones while GeneCo employees passed them with guns that were far larger than were necessary to kill an intruder. A speaker nearby intoned how illegal it was for them to be there, let alone harvesting their glowing blue crop.

"Stay nearby, Kid," Graverobber breathed against her ear. Shilo merely nodded, having not yet mastered Graverobber's ability to speak almost without making a sound.

Graverobber crept in one direction leaving Shilo to the other direction in search of corpses to harvest. Graverobber was being uncharacteristically quiet, and Shilo couldn't help but think that he was as nervous about being surrounded by GeneCo employees as she was.

She found a relatively fresh corpse in an open grave. She looked around furtively for GeneCo before creeping quickly across pen ground and dropping into the grave where she would be more difficult to spot. There were six corpses in the grave, none more than a few months dead. Should make for a good harvest if they hadn't already been drained.

Shilo could hear Graverobber humming nearby as she took out her extractor and shoved it up a nostril of the topmost cadaver into the fleshy mass that acted as a protective barrier between her tool and the brain. She forced her way through it and pulled the plunger back. The glowing blue substance didn't want to lieave its well, but Shilo won out in the end, extracting three full vials from just the first body. She got through the first four bodies without issue, stopping and stooping below the lip of the overturned earth while the patrols passed.

She had no idea what caused it, but while prepping the fifth body, the world spun and narrowed down to a pinprick. She couldn't force enough oxygen into her lungs and she was certain that between the blood roaring in her ears and the pounding of her heart the patrol would find and kill her, though the logical part of her mind that hadn't yet shut down knew that only she could hear these things. It had been such a long time since the withdrawal had hit her so hard; she had thought that she was doing so well, that the worst was over and perhaps she wouldn't feel the symptoms at all soon enough. All of that had died in that instant.

Shilo peeked over the lip of the grave. All clear. She scrambled out, still riding the symptoms strong; she had to get to Graverobber, they had to get out of the cemetery before she got them both killed.

She found him three headstones away. He took one look at her and packed up his extraction kit; Shilo had forgotten hers. Seeing her blanch Graverobber sat her in the shadows of a solemn stone angel with the epithet, "Let you sins be judged in Hell" and ordered her not to move while he went to retrieve her kit and her haul. She mumbled something about not being far to his retreating back.

It was a tense, nearly silent ten minutes before Graverobber reappeared. A patrol had passed and Shilo had been too afraid to even breathe while he and his huge gun passed. The tension did not help her regulate her breathing.

When Graverobber reappeared he breathed against Shilo's ear that the guard should change in about two minutes. Until then, it was too risky to move. Shilo seemed not to hear him, she only stared at her shaking hands.

At the shift change, Graverobber lead Shilo like a wraith to the gate where he shoved her almost unceremoniously through the bars and deftly climbed over it himself. He grabbed Shilo by the arm and led her in a zigzag through a maze of streets and alleys in case they were followed. It was more than half an hour after leaving the graveyard that they were on their way back to the cottage.

"I don't know what happened," Shilo apologized when Graverobber sat her down on the couch. It wasn't until he wrapped her tightly in their thickest blanket that she realized she was cold.

"You rebounded Kid, it happens. Don't worry, it'll pass and you'll be fine," Graverobber told her, sitting down next to her and wrapping her in his arms.

She curled into his lap like a child after a bad fright and lay her head on his shoulder.

"I ruined our harvest," she bemoaned dejectedly.

"It doesn't matter," he assured her, rubbing her back in a soothing manner.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop that, it doesn't suit you. Weak personalities are sorry over nothing. You aren't weak," he told her firmly.

Shilo stopped arguing. She closed her eyes and her breathing finally evened out. After a few minutes she fell asleep in his arms.

He picked her up and curled up with her on the mattress. The addicts could wait, Graverobber wasn't about to leave Shilo alone, and he wasn't going to risk her around the highly addictive drug in case she got any ideas. Soon enough, he fell asleep as well; restless, but at least he didn't wake Shilo.

[A/N: Another really long hiatus that was uncalled for. I'm really sorry, but for those of you that have stuck with me and the story even with my absences, thank you so much. I know this isn't a great chapter, I think it could be so much better considering the wait between updates, but this is what came out, so this is what we get.

As always, I don't own REPO! Or anything about it, actually. I own paraphernalia and all that jazz, but other than that, the only thing here that's mine is the plot.

Until next time~]


	14. Chapter 13

[DISCLAIMER: Since I am female, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that I don't own REPO! The Genetic Opera, or any or the related characters. I only own the plot that I came up with.]

She had been in good health for days. They had gone on three successful harvests since her breakdown in the graveyard and Shilo was hoping that she was past the worst of it and that she wouldn't need to worry about it soon. But she had gotten her hopes up last time too, and Graverobber seemed to have put her back on suicide watch or something, because he was careful around her. Painfully, wretchedly careful.

She had taken to clinging to him in the night when they were both supposed to be asleep and neither likely actually was, afraid suddenly that he would disappear in the night like a ghost. The confidence that she had been slowly coaxing out of the recesses of her mind had fled with a single bad night.

"Relax, Kid," he had told her, stroking her short, sweat soaked hair one night when a nightmare had woken her with a scream tearing its way out of her throat, "There's nothing here but you and me, and that's how it's gonna stay."

But that had been days ago, and Shilo was doing much better now than she had been just days ago. She didn't spend every night squeezing the very oxygen out of Graverobber's lungs. They slept with their fingers entwined, and sometimes with their legs a tangled mess, but she wasn't clinging to him anymore.

All of that was unimportant during the day when they weren't curled up in the bed. There wasn't much for them to do during the day; theirs was a nocturnal lifestyle. They rarely risked going out during the day and letting people see Shilo's face in a clearer light. Nor did they want prying eyes seeing them enter and leave the cottage too often. So instead they spent the day cleaning the important parts of their cottage and leaving the rest in disrepair for those just in case reasons.

Shilo walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, nothing unusual there—she had probably forgotten to grab her comb. Her hair was now long enough for her to run a comb through it if she wanted to, but she always seemed to forget to grab it before heading for her bath.

She walked right into Graverobber who was standing outside holding her comb in one hand with the other raised to knock. She stumbled, hastily grabbing her towel lest it fall and she end up mortified, wishing she had wrapped it more tightly around herself. Graverobber caught her by the shoulders and steadied her, dropping the comb with a clatter as he did so.

"We need to stop meeting like this," he joked, still holding her by the shoulders.

"For a guy wearing such huge boots, you sure are stealthy," Shilo grumbled, still clinging for dear life to the towel and staring steadfastly at Graverobber's scarf.

His fingers trailed lightly against her moist collarbone and to her chin, lifting her face so that she had little choice but to look up at him. She looked confused and a shadow of his Cheshire grin flashed across his features as he leaned down to her.

His first instinct was to fun, but she found herself frozen like a rabbit cornered by the fox. Her heart beating too hard and too fast and she felt like she might faint. She had hoped, so secretly, that this would happen and now her mind refused to believe that it finally was.

It was gentle, almost chaste press of chapped lips against her; almost as if he was afraid she would reject the touch. When she didn't he became more assertive, kissing her until he forced small noises from her throat. He pinned her free hand to the wall before disentangled her fingers from the towel and pinning that hand as well.

Eventually, what felt like an eternity passed, and he let her go. For a moment she swayed where she stood with her eyes still closed.

"Please tell me I'm still wearing my towel. Please tell me it didn't fall, even if it's not true," she managed to say in a breathy voice before she opened her eyes.

Graverobber laughed, deep, hearty, and purely masculine. She was indeed still wearing her towel, though it had shifted dangerously low. She scrabbled to shift and tighten it, accidentally flashing more leg than she was comfortable with. Glancing up, she saw that Graverobber's eyes were fixed on that point and her face burned with embarrassment.

"I'm… going to go get dressed now," she announced awkwardly, leaving the comb forgotten on the floor as she sidled past Graverobber back into the bathroom with her cheeks still burning.

She sat down on the cover of the toilet seat, sitting right on the clothes that she was supposedly putting on, and lay her head down on the sink edge and sighed with a contented smile on her face. Shilo didn't know if what just happened changed anything between them, but at least she could tell herself that she meant something to him.

A dark, cynical little voice in her head told her that it was simply the fact that she was garbed only in a towel, but she pushed it aside. He had seen her in clothes that covered less than the towel on nights that she masqueraded as his whore. The hands and legs that twined every night could be explained away. To Shilo, this felt like something more substantial.

Finally, Shilo got up and dressed and walked back into the living room where Graverobber was lounging on the couch. As she passed heading for the other chair in the room he grabbed her and pulled her down to lounge as well. She squeaked out a flimsy protest.

"Predictable," she accused.

"That's okay," he claimed nonchalantly, "people stop expecting predictable after a while."

She had nothing to say to that as she leaned her head down on his shoulder.

"Your hair's wet," he pointed out.

"Yup," she chirped, settling more comfortably, "but you sat me here, so I intend to be comfortable."

Graverobber chuckled at that. They sat in amicable silence for a while. She held his hand loosely while he stroked her leg with his free hand. Shilo noticed that her comb was back where it had been before she had taken her bath.

"I have to go to the alley tonight," Graverobber said into the silence. His voice was somber, "Are you coming, or staying here?"

"I don't want to be alone," she said after a moment; Graverobber nodded, "I don't want to hide anymore."

"Better hidden than dead. Sweet will get bored eventually," he replied. Shilo nodded.

It was already almost sunset, so she stood and went to change into one of her addict outfits.

[A/N: I'm really sorry that I keep wandering away from this story. I love it so much, but lately it hasn't been cooperating when I go to write it. This isn't exactly how this chapter was supposed to go, but since it turned out to be mostly fluff, I don't think you'll mind too much, right? Hopefully, the next chapter will be more interesting. I'll try not to keep you guys waiting for too long this time... though I say that every time. Thank you all so much for sticking with me, even after all this time.]


	15. Chapter 14

Shilo stood off to the side of the alley wearing one of the less skimpy addict outfits she owned, a black tank top under a forest green shirt just far enough past her hips to cover the essentials that was littered with tactless tears, a pair of black leggings—oh how she hated leggings—(also torn) and a pair of beaten up combat boots. Today, her hair was tucked up under a plan auburn bob of a wig, and was shocked to realize that, very soon, she would need to wear a wig cap for the first time. She was chatting with addicts who were still, at least to their own opinion, woefully sober. Someone commented that this was the longest time that Graverobber brought the same woman to the alley. Another said with a laugh that perhaps Graverobber had finally been tamed. Shilo joined in their laughter, but she didn't think she'd imagined the tinge of jealousy and regret in their voices. That was one less payment method after all, and the remaining one wasn't nearly so fun.

Graverobber wandered over, trailed his fingers down Shilo's bare arm, raising gooseflesh as we went before leading one of the still sober addicts gathered around away for their hit. She couldn't help the blush that crept up her neck to flush her cheeks a faint scarlet, nor could she help but notice a few unfriendly glowers sent her way. Luckily, most of the addicts had accepted the change and the sour looks came from addicts that didn't frequent Graverobber's branch of the Zydrate Support Network.

The blush drained from her face when the addicts started to scatter. Police raids happened all the time, there were usually a dozen cops bursting into the alley. They were loud and gave the gathered ample time to bolt. The police never arrested anyone. The raids were always just meant to get the gathering to disperse. It was part of the balance. The illusion that the police had authority.

But this time there were no shouts, no sounds of a dozen pairs of combat boots storming in heavily armed with pointed guns despite the fingers that never strayed to the trigger. People didn't start to scatter until the two heavily armed women were halfway down the alley and the wrongness of their presence registered with the few who were still clinging unhappily to sobriety. It was the sober ones that started the bolt, but it didn't take long for the rest to follow.

The Henchwomen reached Shilo before Graverobber could. One grabbed her arm, forcing her to her knees and pulling the wig off, while the other pressed her pistol to Shilo's temple. The barrel was cold. Tears fell from beneath Shilo's closed eyelids; she didn't want to see what was about to happen. She was about to die.

"We're supposed to kill you on sight and bring your head to Amber Sweet, Shilo Wallace. Sierie still might if we can't fake your death well enough," Adrien informed her captive when Graverobber had drawn close enough to overhear.

"I don't want to die," Shilo whispered, unwilling to open her eyes, still petrified to hear the mechanisms turn as the trigger was squeezed.

"We figured as much," Sierie stated, her gun didn't waver, "This is what's going to happen: your cottage will burn to the ground—they'll let the building burn if it doesn't spread—inside will be a woman similar to you, burned beyond recognition. When we find the body Amber Sweet will be told that the corpse belonged to one Shilo Wallace. Amber Sweet will allow herself to be mollified as long as Shilo Wallace doesn't appear on her doorstep claiming to be the rightful owner to GeneCo. If you do something that stupid, I will not hesitate to kill you."

"Do it tonight," Graverobber said before Shilo could wrap her head around what was happening; he didn't give a second thought to the woman who had to die in order for Shilo to live. For all he knew, the woman was dead before she went into the cottage. He'd tell Shilo that was the case, even if he never figured out the truth, if Shilo ever asked.

"We already have. A candle tipped over while Shilo was asleep, the old house didn't have a chance," Adrien told them nonchalantly, "There's a duffel bag on the stairs over there with a few of the outfits you've come to own, and some other belongings. Graverobber, you don't make it a habit to keep your belongings in one place, you'll figure out what you'll do now. We'll hold onto Rotti Largo's will. All that's left now is for you to disappear."

"Graverobber, we'll be in touch," Sierie said, putting up her gun and turning away.

"Oh," Adrien said and paused at the mouth of the alley, "I should have to say this, but don't go sniffing around the wreckage."

And then the Henchwomen were gone.

It was several minutes before either of them believed that Adrien and Sierie were gone. Graverobber pulled Shilo into his arms, holding her tightly while she sobbed into his chest; her entire body was chilled by fear and he soothingly tried to rub some of his warmth into her arms.

"They killed someone," Shilo gasped.

"Maybe. Maybe not. No way of knowing. No way of changing it. Don't waste it, the Henchwomen aren't going to risk their lives for yours a second time," Graverobber told her absently, the lie he'd planned to give refusing to pass his lips.

Shilo hiccupped and nodded, but she didn't say anything.

"We have to go, kid," he whispered into her hair. He let her stand there forlornly wiping moisture from her face as he went to grab the duffel bag Adrien had thought to put together that was sitting on the nearby stoop.

"Where will we go?" Shilo asked.

"There's more than one abandoned home in this city," he told her in response.

"That's true."

"Hell, maybe we'll live somewhere legally; we could even pay rent," he said with a laugh.

"I don't think we have to go that far," Shilo replied with a chuckle.

"Rogues we'll be, then," Graverobber declared, wrapping a possessive arm around her shoulders, slinging the duffel bag over his own.

"You know what I think?" Shilos said. Graverobber gave her a sidelong glance as invitation to continue but said nothing, "I think I can do this."

Graverobber gave her shoulders a squeeze, "I'm glad to hear it from your own lips. Personally, I know you can do it, kid."

She laid her head on his shoulder for a moment and then they were off on the hunt for a new abandoned home.


	16. Epilogue

"Sometimes it feels like it's been a very long year. Sometimes it feels like it's been a week since you found me in the alley waiting to die," Shilo said in an off-hand manner.

"It hasn't been a year yet," Graverobber told her with that Cheshire grin.

"Close enough!" she replied, dropping into his lap with comfortable ease.

"True," he automatically wrapped his arms around her and stole a kiss, "What brings this up?"

"Nothing really. I just noticed the date in a window and realized it was close," she replied.

She swept a lock of hair out of her eyes, hair that was now long enough for her to complain about getting in the way. Graverobber had recently told her that she had graduated into a fully recognized graverobber in his books; right before telling her that he was retiring and she should take over the family business. Which turned out to be utter crap because his next statement was that having graduated meant absolutely nothing and mussed up her hair, hair that she had just finally gotten to stay out of her face.

"We should head out if we're going to harvest tonight," Shilo commented after a while of sitting in silence; the shadows on the wall had gotten longer, it was almost time for the nocturnal beasts to wake.

Graverobber stirred and leaned his chin onto her shoulder, "I think we should stay in tonight."

"Okay then," she replied and settled more comfortably as the last rays of sunlight abandoned the world and left them in darkness.

"I love you," Shilo whispered, her eyes half closed.

"I love you too, kid."

[Author's Note:

So, I've been sitting on the last chapter and the epilogue for a good year now (I know, so long, you probably all hate me for making you wait so long) in hopes that it would rewrite itself into something worth posting while I wasn't looking. Oddly enough, that didn't happen. While I did make a few edits while I was typing it up, it's still pretty much the same crap I wasn't satisfied with back when I originally wrote it. I really wanted to give you guys, who have been so awesome and understanding and supportive while I wrote this little story… and didn't write this little story, something really awesome to end with. What I give you is something simple, short, and sweet. At least that's what I hope I ended up giving.

If you've been reading from the beginning, thank you so much for taking this journey with me. And if you've just started reading, thank you for taking the time to read, and hopefully enjoying, my fic. You're all more amazing than I can put into words.

As always, thanks for reading, feel free to leave me a review to let me know how you enjoyed the ending and the story as a whole.

DISCLAIMER;; I do not own REPO! The Genetic Opera, or any of the characters or places therein, these all belong to their rightful owners, and I am not Terrance or Darren; though perhaps they've read the fic (a girl can dream, right?). ]


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